Chorus
by Missie2
Summary: Pearl is missing, and in order to find her Steven has to rely on Homeworld's criminal underworld and as many individual pearls as he can find for help. And then things get messy...
1. Chapter 1

**Chorus**

Note: I have the overwhelming urge to strike while the iron's hot and before any new episodes further skew my headcanon, but it was always my intention to do this once Breaking Down was finished. Also, as I am on leave from hospital at the moment and still a mushy-headed invalid, if I make mistakes please don't hesitate to point them out.

Note to new readers: You should read A String of Pearls, an earlier work of mine, before reading this. It's not a requirement but it will make more sense if you do. Might also want to have a look at Bits and Pieces for characters that appear in this story.

Last note: As always, I'm going to add a link to my novel, if you enjoy what I do in fanon you might like my original work.

US link: dp/B07BGSPPBY

UK link: . /dp/B07BGSPPBY

 **Chapter One**

 **Mute**

In those first few hours, the worst part of it all was realizing just how long Pearl had been missing before they really noticed.

She didn't usually wander far from the temple as Amethyst did, sometimes for days at a time, and she didn't tend to go off on long solo missions the way Garnet did, but she did have something of a life outside the temple (although what that life entailed she didn't usually talk much about) so for her to be gone for a few hours wasn't that strange.

The mood in the temple had been subdued anyway, since _that_ happened.

( _That_ being the thing Pearl was physically incapable of talking about, and the others just plain unwilling to discuss.)

It was natural for them to want to give each other some space, right?

Steven hung out with his Dad at the carwash, had dinner at Fish Stew Pizza, slept over at Connie's and came back to find his shirts were exactly where he'd dropped them on the floor. Unusual, because Pearl would have folded them away, but he didn't think anything of it. Maybe she was busy.

Steven went to visit the spot where the barn used to be, played some arcade games with Buck and Sour Cream, chilled at the Big Donut for a few hours chatting to regular customers and came home to find dishes piling up in the sink. Garnet was back, but she went straight into the temple after tossing a casual greeting his way. Shrugging, Steven rolled up his sleeves and did the dishes himself. Pearl was probably getting sick of always cleaning up after him.

Four days in, he was really starting to worry. He'd seen Amethyst and Garnet multiple times, even just in passing, but it was like Pearl had dropped off the face of the earth. He'd gone looking for her in all of her usual favourite spots but there was no sign she'd been anywhere near them in a while. He asked around town if anyone had seen her recently, but nobody had.

 _She's just taking some time for herself. Everyone has to do that sometimes._

As much as Steven wanted to believe that, he knew Pearl wouldn't just leave like that without telling anyone.

Eventually, sick to his stomach, he asked Garnet. That's when they figured out she'd been missing for a week.

…..

"Don't worry so much," Amethyst said with a careless shrug. "She'll turn up. She probably just got stuck somewhere really dumb and was too embarrassed to ask for help."

Amethyst was trying to act casual, but Steven could tell she was as worried as any of them. She had that little line of tension across the bridge of her nose she always got when something really bothered her.

"Yeah, probably," Steven laughed feebly anyway.

Garnet beamed in a moment later. Outwardly she looked as unruffled as always, but there was a strange energy crackling around her that betrayed how stressed she really was. They were all trying to put a brave face on and failing.

"Did you find anything?" Steven asked, hopeful even though he knew the answer.

"Nothing," Garnet admitted, sinking onto the couch. "Not a trace."

"That means she's still on the planet, at least," Amethyst offered.

"No, that just means she didn't warp anywhere," Garnet growled. "She could have been picked up by something else. Someone."

A grim silence washed over them. They didn't want to say it, but their greatest fear was that she had been picked up by Homeworld agents without them knowing, making rescue pretty much impossible.

 _We would have gotten a message from Homeworld if they did get her. They'd call with demands. Wouldn't they?_

"We've delayed our missions for too long," Garnet sighed at last. "We have places to investigate..."

"You're giving up?" Steven cried. Hot angry tears spiked the edge of his vision.

"We've looked everywhere, Steven," Garnet answered, sounding on the verge of tears herself. "All we can do now is wait. We have a duty to protect the people of earth, we need to carry out our missions. With or without Pearl."

They left him at home, which saved him the bother of digging in his heels and refusing to go. With their luck, Pearl would probably show up needing help as soon as they beamed away.

 _They can't have tried everywhere. What did they miss?_

Lion, sleeping in the corner, yawned and stretched.

 _Aha!_

…..

"I don't think it's broken," Lars groaned sourly. "Maybe try stepping on it a little harder next time, huh?"

He massaged his nose as Steven gave him a half-hearted apology and launched into the reason why he had come to them. The off-colour gems listened intently, turning away from their respective consoles.

"I thought maybe you had seen her?" he asked, although he could tell from their exchanging awkward glances they hadn't. "Or maybe picked up a transmission about a captured Pearl or something...anything?"

"Steven will injure the captain's nose," Padparascha gasped.

"It's unlikely they'd put out a transmission for a captured pearl," Rhodonite said, fidgeting in her seat. "Technically that comes under stolen property..."

"We haven't heard of any ships entering Earth's atmosphere these last few orbits," the left Rutile chipped in. "There's a fuel shortage, apparently."

"Oh," Steven sighed. There went his last hope...

"Um," Rhodonite piped up, fidgeting even more. "I have to ask...if you know...what string did she come from?"

"I don't know," Steven admitted. "Why?"

Rhodonite struggled to talk, grasped at her own hands, then finally sighed and melted. Her two components split apart and tripped over each other, and shakily got to their feet. The Ruby looked almost identical to the Ruby that made up half of Garnet, but the pearl...

She looked enough like Pearl for it to hurt to look at her, but she was pale blue, almost white, and seemed so frail she could barely stand. She was holding onto Ruby for balance, but gave up standing after a moment and sank to her knees.

"Sorry," she mumbled. "We haven't been split for a while..."

"Don't apologize," Ruby insisted, stroking her hand.

"Why did you want to know about Pearl's...string?" Steven interrupted before they could get sidetracked by lovey-dovey stuff.

The pearl took a deep breath before she spoke in a tone as soft and wavering as a trickle of water.

"Some of the older pearls had tracking beams implanted in their gems," she explained, shrinking back from everyone's eyes on her to hide behind Ruby. "It was expensive though, so it was scrapped for other simpler tracking implants. They stopped making them after the seventeenth generation."

"You think she got beamed by a tracker?" the right Rutile asked with a confused frown. "How would that work?"

"I'm not even sure," Pearl said, curling in on herself even more. "I just know some of the older pearls had them. I was made after the restrictions, I don't even have a tracker..."

"It's okay, don't get worked up," Ruby soothed.

"If she did get beamed up," Steven asked gently, now horribly sure that this was the answer they'd been looking for, "how would we find out?"

"Trace memory," Pearl answered. "She would have left some memory behind...but you'd need a pearl to find it."

Trembling, she rose to her feet and stepped out from behind Ruby. Steven could see the barely-restrained panic in her eyes, but she seemed determined to hold it together.

"Show me where you last saw her."

…..

They spent most of the day following some invisible trail Pearl was picking up, it was slow progress because she freaked out at almost anything and required Ruby to calm her down, but Steven couldn't hold it against her. At least she was trying, which was more useful than anything that Garnet or Amethyst had managed.

Eventually, they stopped in front of the sapling Pearl had planted to replace the tree Holo-Pearl had destroyed so long ago.

"She was here for a while," Pearl mumbled, doing some weird fidgety thing with her hands. "She felt unwell."

 _She did say she had a headache. Last week, she asked me to turn down the TV because her head hurt._

"She got the pull here," Pearl gasped, sinking to her knees and running her hands over an unremarkable patch of grass. "She tried to hold onto the tree but it was too strong..."

"There were no ships in the atmosphere though," Ruby mused aloud. "How did it pull her up?"

"Ships aren't needed," Pearl said. "It's nanotech...it reduced her to nanobytes and pulled her through a microwarp."

"They can do that?" Steven gasped, though he barely understood a word Pearl had just said.

"They had the technology," Pearl explained. "But it was expensive, and they scrapped it. Your pearl might be the only living pearl that still has it. Most gems wouldn't even know how it works!"

"So what do we do now? Do you know where she is?"

"No, but if I had to guess I would say she's on Homeworld or one of the bigger colonies," Pearl sighed.

Crestfallen, Steven slumped to the ground. At least they knew a bit more, but there was nothing to be done with that information. Pearl was curling in on herself again, hand over her mouth in a way that made Steven want to cry until he had no tears left.

"You did what you could," Ruby whispered to her. "We can fuse again now, if you want..."

"No," she said, with sudden vehemence that made her seem like a completely different gem. "I can't do anything more, but I know a gem that can."

…..

 _Yellow Diamond?_

The commlink beamed the stern face of Homeworld's leader to the ship, or at least Homeworld's leader if she'd gotten really into the punk scene and developed a habit of slouching.

"What's this about then?" the yellow gem drawled lazily. "I don't make a habit of showing my face, I hope you know..."

"Thank you for taking this call," Ruby said, Pearl cowering behind her. "We need some help with regards to a pearl..."

"I only remodel twice on the same model," the yellow gem said. "And I know that _one_ has been done more than twice..."

"Oh, it's not for her," Ruby explained. Behind her, Pearl gingerly touched her closed eyes. "It's not a remodel job...this quartz is looking for a missing pearl."

Steven shuffled in front of the console and bore the scrutiny of the yellow gem. She cocked an eyebrow and smiled wryly.

"Unusual quartz that's able to afford a pearl," she drawled. "Especially one worth stealing. So tell me...why should I take this job?"

"Well, uh..."

Ruby stumbled over her words trying (and probably failing) to convince the yellow gem, and Steven's eyes wandered until he saw something he hadn't noticed. There was a pearl on the commlink, sitting on the yellow gem's left side, so still she blended into the mess of the workshop room. He'd noticed because she had moved, just barely.

Pearl slid out from behind Ruby, just a little, and her hands moved in that same fidgety way. Now, however, the other pearl's hands moved too. Much smaller, more graceful movements, but they mirrored each other in a strange way.

"We should take the job."

The yellow gem swung in her chair to stare with amusement at her pearl. The pearl, for her part, showed no emotion of any kind, just folded her hands on her lap and waited.

"We should, huh?" the yellow gem chuckled. "Who's we, exactly? Any reason _why?"_

The pearl said nothing, and for one awful moment Steven thought she was going to get in trouble with this strange non-diamond.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," the yellow gem shrugged and turned back towards the commlink. "Okay, I'll take it. Sounds interesting in any case. I'm going to give you some co-ordinates, meet me there and we can get down to business."

"Landing on Homeworld," Lars growled, finally speaking after watching this exchange with an air of boredom. "That's gonna be a trip..."

"No, just send the quartz," the yellow gem said. "I don't want to attract any unneeded attention."

Steven gulped. But what choice did he have?


	2. Chapter 2

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Two**

 **Note:** Updates to this and other fics I'm writing will be sporadic, as mentioned earlier my health is in a weird place and it's hard to get wifi in hospitals. Hopefully I'll be back to spamming chapters very soon. In the meantime, and as is now ritual, I recommend you check out my novel if you like my work, and that way you have something to read if I end up in the ICU for a bit.

US link: dp/B07BGSPPBY

UK link: . /dp/B07BGSPPBY

And now, paperback!: dp/1981067620

…..

 **Prelude**

Steven agonized over telling Garnet and Amethyst where he was going, but in the end they made the decision for him. He went home to pack some supplies and they weren't there, still on the last mission they'd taken. Aware that the clock was against him and this mysterious yellow gem probably wouldn't wait around, he threw some food and a change of clothes into his backpack. He briefly considered calling Connie, but given what Ruby and Pearl had told him about who they were getting involved with he decided against it. If things went badly wrong at least he'd be the only one in the firing line.

 _Nobody knows much about her,_ Ruby had said. _She remodels pearls, it's illegal but pretty much everyone does it. She's the best on the planet but she only takes on some jobs._

 _Remodels pearls how?_ Steven had asked, with an innocence he would never see again.

 _She tampers with their manifested forms, or their gems,_ Pearl answered, trembling behind Ruby near the console. _To change their appearance._

 _Oh, so it's like...plastic surgery, kind of? h_ e laughed awkwardly.

 _I don't know what that is,_ Ruby shrugged. _It happens because the pearls' owner doesn't like how they look and a colour wash and new apparel won't make the change they want. Or they want the pearl to stop doing something it can't help doing._

 _Did she remodel you?_ Steven asked Pearl, hoping to quell that sick feeling growing in his stomach.

 _Yes,_ she answered. _Twice. The third time a different gem did it._

 _What did she do to you?_ Lars piped up from the captain's chair. Steven hadn't realized he'd been listening.

 _My owner thought my eyes were too close together,_ Pearl mumbled, and she declined to say any more.

Talking about remodeling clearly stressed her out, and Ruby had expressed anger towards the whole idea (obviously because it distressed Pearl so much) so why were they putting their trust in this yellow gem? Steven asked himself over and over as he climbed into the shuttle and detached from the ship.

The Rutiles had programmed the shuttle to slip through a gap in Homeworld's security gates, and he was due to land in a section of the main city that housed acres of factories. After that, he was on his own before he could be picked up by the yellow gem. It was nerve-shredding.

He managed to slip through, and the smog of the factories covered his landing nicely. So far, so much easier than he imagined. Sitting on the roof of the factory, he heard gems underneath him talking as they worked. They used a lot of words he didn't understand, but otherwise their speech patterns were human-like.

"Quartz?"

He jumped, nearly shouted. For such a large creature, the yellow gem was remarkably quiet.

"Wanna get those nerves under control, pebble," she quipped. "Don't want to attract too much attention."

"Right," he mumbled. "Sorry. I'm Steven, thanks so much for..."

"You look different to other quartzes," she cut across him. "I dig it, but it's a bit too conspicuous. Can you fix that?"

"Uh, well, I'm not really good at shifting yet..."

"Well, we have to get across the city on foot, we need to do something," she said, stroking her chin thoughtfully. "Hang on..."

She took two small objects from the pocket of her ripped-up leggings. One of them, a small sheet of metallic-looking paper, she handed to him. The other, a small round gem, she tapped lightly and spoke to.

"We need you out here," she drawled.

The gem glowed and a moment later a pearl, red-haired and dressed in a dark blue tunic but otherwise identical to Pearl, stood blinking impassively beside them.

"This quartz," the yellow gem began, gesturing to Steven in a casual, slightly disparaging way, "needs to look less ready-to-be-arrested-and-tossed-in-isopod. Can you do anything?"

"Of course," the pearl answered.

Her gem whirred and shot out a beam of light that traced Steven's body. It tickled, but he tried hard not to squirm.

"Those are nanobytes," she told him. "Try not to make any unnecessary movements, it should cover you until we get to the workshop."

It was kind of creepy how she sounded so much like Pearl but a hundred times quieter and with none of the liveliness. Like Pearl if she'd been stripped of a personality.

 _That's unfair,_ Steven scolded himself internally. _You just met her, maybe she's just shy._

The two gems turned on their heels in perfect sync and started walking off. Steven grabbed his backpack and tried to keep up.

…..

The trip to the yellow gem's workshop took them right through the city, onto one of the public transport vehicles and through six different checkpoints. Steven and the yellow gem passed quickly enough, but they scanned the pearl carefully, even prying open her mouth to check her throat. They had a specific tool for that job, and Steven couldn't watch them use it on her.

Gems of all kinds milled around the city's immaculate streets. He saw a huge number of Amethysts patrolling, groups of Jasper mucking around in alleys, a crowd of Rubies huddled around a shopfront, a number of upper-class-looking gems on the train-type thing they got on. This was where he saw some other pearls, nowehere else.

Steven had known, if not dwelled on, pearls' status as more or less slaves on Homeworld, but the train ride really cemented it in his horrified mind. The few that he saw varied in style and colour but were otherwise the same, their faces were blank and their eyes downcast and they didn't speak unless they were spoken to.

The yellow gem had spent the ride watching the pearls, jotting down notes in a little tablet-type thing she had. Occasionally she leaned over to whisper to her pearl. They both pretty much ignored Steven. By the time they reached the workshop Steven had seen so much he felt dizzy.

"Okay, let's talk plan," the yellow gem said with one foot in the workshop, tossing a wheeled chair in Steven's general direction. "What do you want and what do you want me to do about it?"

"Well, uh..." Steven mumbled, gulping. "Shouldn't we introduce ourselves first?"

The yellow gem snorted, but it was good-natured.

"Manners don't count for much in this business," she said. "But okay, I'll bite. I'm Orthoclase."

"Oh, I thought..."

"Yeah, I get that a lot. Unfortunately," she muttered, rolling her eyes.

"Sorry," Steven sputtered. It wouldn't do to annoy this gem, even if she wasn't a diamond. "I'm Steven. Steven Quartz Universe."

"Are you a new kind of quartz? I've never heard that designation before," Orthoclase asked, fingers poised over her tablet-thing.

"Actually, I'm half gem," he explained. "My mother was a quartz..."

He stopped himself, remembering that that wasn't true. But he couldn't just tell these stranger gems that, could he?

"What's a mother?" Orthoclase asked.

"Uh...it's like a gem you grow inside," Steven tried to explain. "You know, like you guys grow from the ground? It's like that except I grew from another gem and sort of took over her form..."

By the look on Orthoclase's face, this explanation was a really bad one. The pearl, however, looked unruffled.

"So you're a parasite," she offered. "That's unusual."

"I'll say," Orthoclase snorted, shaking her head. "At least you're probably not a zoatox, right?"

"I don't know what that is," Steven admitted.

"Then you probably aren't. Great. Parasitic gems, what next? And you're looking for a pearl..."

"Specifically, she's looking for the renegade pearl that fought in the rebellion with Rose Quartz," the pearl said.

Orthoclase gaped, and quickly recovered.

"That's why you wanted us to take this job, isn't it?" she said, flicking the pearl's forehead playfully. "Holy Core...what makes you think that pearl is here?"

"She went missing a week ago..." Steven began. "Another pearl tracked down where she was taken from, she said there was nano-something and a macrowarp..."

"Microwarp," the pearl corrected. "And nanobytes, she left memory behind. She had a nanotracer installed."

Orthoclase whistled.

"This just gets better and better," she laughed. "There hasn't been a pearl with a nanotracer on Homeworld in 800 orbits. I've never even _seen_ one!"

"I know it's a big thing to ask," Steven said, already feeling like they were going to send him away. "But we need her back. Please."

"Are you kidding?" Orthoclase scoffed. "This has got to be the riskiest, most impossible job ever. Of course I'm going to do it!"

A hint of a smile began on the pearls' face. The relief hit Steven like a punch to the stomach. Tears gathered behind his eyes.

"Thank you," he sobbed, wiping at his eyes furiously.

"Don't thank me yet," Orthoclase said, patting his head. "I don't know how or where to start looking..."

"I've worked out a plan," the pearl piped up.

"Of course you have," Orthoclase drawled, spinning on her chair and throwing her feet up on the pearl's lap. "Do you want to share it or is it one of those things you keep to yourself?"

Apparently not being able to talk about things was a pearl-wide trait.

"There's really only one way to go about this," the pearl began, folding her hands neatly over Orthoclase's feet. "If she's on Homeworld or near enough, we can get a signal to her."

"Not if she's impounded," Orthoclase interrupted.

"No, not a comm signal," the pearl continued. "Pearls can communicate over distances without being detected."

Orthoclase's posture shifted dramatically. She took her feet off of the pearl's lap, leaned forward, suddenly intensely focused.

"Since when?" she probed, sounding stern but not angry. "I knew you had some way of talking but I assumed it was that hand-thing you keep doing..."

"That is also how we communicate," the pearl said. "But when the restrictions were placed on us, gesture-speak was rendered ineffective. We developed something else to take its place."

Orthoclase laughed, and clapped Steven on the back hard enough to almost knock him out of his seat.

"Nearly eighteen orbits of asking and watching and waiting and then you come along and she spills all her secrets," she chuckled. "I owe you, pebble."

Steven searched the pearl's face for signs that she was upset, but she was as solemn and still as a marble statue.

"We call it song-weaving," the pearl explained, to Orthoclase's growing amazement. "We learned to knit sound waves together and we share memory through them. Mostly our songs are at a frequency and volume too low for other gems to hear, but pearls can tell if there is one in the air. They can absorb it, pass it on or add to it."

"Have you been doing that here all this time?" Orthoclase asked incredulously.

"Of course," the pearl responded.

"How is that going to help Pearl?" Steven asked. "I think you didn't start doing that until after she left for Earth... that's when the restrictions were made, right?"

The pearl on Lars' ship had told him a lot about the restrictions. More than he wanted to know.

"Even if she can't pick up the art for herself, she can hear it and if it's still connected to the pearl that sent it that pearl will know where she is."

The pearl's gem whirred and lit up the room. An image of long interconnected silver threads floated in front of them. On each thread was a small dot.

"With a song that is connected at several points, for instance woven by five pearls, it can expand and reach outwards at a considerable distance. It could reach up to twenty pearls, who could then pass it on and strengthen it.

"Huh. This is going to be easier than I thought," Orthoclase said.

"I'm afraid not," the pearl told her. "In order to cover the entirety of Homeworld, we would need a concentrated effort from at least five hundred individual pearls, all singing the same song. We would also have to compose a song that can support that many voices. And we would have to do it undetected."

Orthoclase whistled low, and Steven's heart sank. It sounded impossible. He had seen less than a dozen pearls on Homeworld, how were they going to get five hundred?

"We don't need to find five hundred pearls," the pearl said, as if he'd said that out loud. "We need around fifty to create the structure. If it travels far enough, other pearls will strengthen it as it goes."

"That's a pretty big if," Orthoclase mused.

"We also need to find a safe isolated place to create it."

"That I can probably do," Orthoclase said, rising to her feet. "I know just the gem. But this whole operation sounds like it's going to get dangerous, so we need something fighting in our corner."

She walked off, dialing a number on her tablet-thing.

"Hey, Hematite! It's me...I need to talk to you about your pearl...no, I told you she's not infected but I think I should take a look at her core circuit..."

Steven and the pearl sat in silence, watching Orthoclase negotiate with this Hematite.

"Um..." he began, awkwardly. "So...does Orthoclase just call you Pearl or..."

"Yes," the pearl answered blandly.

"Doesn't that get confusing when there's other pearls here?"

"No."

"Oh, okay."

"You may address me as something else if you wish."

Steven's mind short-circuited trying to think of a good name, but he kept flashing back to memories of the preschool he'd gone to that was ruled by a little girl with an iron fist whose given name was Annabelle but everyone referred to as...

"Ginger," he blurted out.

"Very well," the pearl said agreeably.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Three**

Note: I'm finally out of the hospital and hopefully on my way to a new period of productivity. While I was there, it was brought to my attention that I had been breaking the AO3 rules by promoting my original work on the site, and it just goes to show how terrible my reading comprehension is at times that I completely missed that when I signed up. I have since removed any trace of said promotion and will cease bleating about it from here on out, except for when I have a blog set up specifically for said bleating, but also to facilitate discussion with readers and interact a bit more with the fandoms I'm currently involved in. Nothing makes me happier than writing, or talking about writing, and I missed it terribly while I was away.

Anyway, on with Homeworld pearl shenanigans!

Note 2: I would advise reading A String of Pearls before continuing, if you haven't already.

…..

 **Accelerando**

The atmosphere had that weird murky 'underwater' feel that made Steven instantly realize it was a dream, but knowing that and reacting appropriately were two different things. He still found himself running down an endless maze of corridors, gleaming chrome and marble fixtures on all sides, looking for the source of that awful drilling whine. It seemed like it was coming from all around him.

At last, he seemed to reach a gap in the wall and burst through it. He found Pearl, as he was expecting for a dream of this nature. Still, he wasn't prepared for just how awful it would be to find her.

Strapped to a table, eyes closed and unmoving as though she were asleep.

And above her, the source of that screeching whining clamour, an enormous drill. The point of which was bearing down into Pearl's gem.

He just about reached the table when Pearl's gem cracked in half.

…..

Steven woke with a gasp, reaching out for...something that wasn't there. For a moment, he couldn't figure out where he was. When the pearl sitting across from him at a console...

 _Ginger. She said I could call her Ginger._

 _..._ spun in her chair to look at him, not with concern but with curiosity, it all came flooding back. He didn't recall even feeling sleepy, but at some point he had curled up on the old couch in the corner and drifted off. Someone had draped an old cloth over him, maybe in a motherly fashion but probably just to keep him from getting scrap dust all over himself.

"We don't have a rest pod here," Ginger told him, blinking vacantly. "If you need to rest, we should find somewhere else for you..."

"The couch is fine," Steven laughed weakly. "I don't mind, I can sleep pretty much anywhere, as long as it's warm and it's pretty warm in here so it's really okay..."

He was babbling but he couldn't stop. Ginger continued staring at him in that half-interested fashion she seemed to have of looking at everything. Usually when he had a bad dream someone was around to talk to, Garnet or Pearl or even his Dad. Garnet would try to talk his worries out with him, Pearl would empathize and attempt to distract him with long rambling stories, Amethyst would offer food or bad TV...

...and all he could expect from this gem was a blank stare.

 _That's not fair. She probably doesn't even know what a dream is, let alone a bad one._

A flicker of movement in the corner alerted him to the fact that he and Ginger were not the only ones in the workshop. The hulking figure perched awkwardly on a tiny stool...

 _Jasper?Here?_

...folded her arms and sighed, looking down at the floor. Looking at her closely, she wasn't anything like the Jasper Steven knew, beyond a first superficial glance. Her gem was on her shoulder, her hair was darker and her jaw more pointed. Her uniform was different, too, and more importantly she lacked that air of aggression and bravado that the other Jasper had. She seemed...sad.

Steven's stomach growled, a welcome distraction. He reached into his backpack and grabbed a sandwich, wolfing it down and following it with a healthy chug of juice. He knew Ginger and the Jasper were staring, but he didn't care.

"All right," Orthoclase bellowed from out of nowhere, clattering into the workshop. "We have to get going soon, Hematite's being a pain in the...oh, when did you get here?"

She addressed the Jasper, sinking onto the couch beside Steven.

"You asked me to meet you here," the Jasper said, fidgeting nervously.

"I did?"

"You did," Ginger reminded her. "You messaged her at first quadrant."

"Oh, right," Orthoclase drawled, tapping her gem carelessly. "Got plans all over the place here..."

"I brought her, like you asked," the Jasper interrupted, handing over a small object in her hand. "Is anything wrong?"

"No, nothing's wrong," Orthoclase said, turning the object over in her hand.

A pearl. One that was scratched and chipped to hell and back, but undeniably a pearl.

"Remind me, how many procedures did I say she needed?" Orthoclase asked.

"Seventeen," the Jasper replied.

"And I also told you I only remodel the same pearl twice, right?"

"You said repairs don't count," the Jasper countered.

"Yeah, they don't, but they're as expensive as a remodel, more in some cases," Orthoclase told her. "So, I have a proposition for you. I can do all seventeen, all at once, and completely free of charge."

The Jasper's mood lifted so dramatically it was like she morphed into a different gem completely.

"You can?" she gasped, breathing hard and smiling a watery, wavery smile. "Why would...how...?"

"You have something I have need of," Orthoclase said. "How many pearls are at the impound right now?"

"Uh, five," the Jasper said, frowning as she thought. "No, six. We had another one brought in before I left."

"Great. I'm going to need them all."

The Jasper laughed, but it died quickly when she realized Orthoclase was dead serious.

"I can't _give_ you the pearls," she scoffed. "They haven't even been signed over to the processing plant..."

"But they will be soon," Orthoclase said with a shrug. "Do you think anyone's coming to collect them?"

"No, probably not," the Jasper admitted. "We thought one of them was a sure thing, but the owner lost the paperwork."

"Exactly. No-one's going to miss them. Sign them over to the processors but deliver them to me instead. Pearls get lost in transit all the time, no-one's going to blame you."

Listening to this conversation in silence, Steven had that awful squirming feeling at the pit of his stomach again. The sandwich he gulped down sat there like a hot rock. Even though he barely understood what these two gems were talking about, the little bits he could figure out painted a very unpleasant picture.

"Look, it's going to take you a long time to afford all the repairs your pearl needs, the impound doesn't pay you nearly enough, so who cares if you mess up the registry a bit? I don't offer this service to anyone else, just you. We need those pearls, and you need something from me."

The Jasper sighed, stared at the cracked gem Orthoclase was holding in her palm and seemed to wrestle with herself.

"If I do this, you'll fix her properly?"

"I give you my word," Orthoclase agreed. "As good as I can get her."

"All right," she said at last. "I'll drop them off here next cycle."

"Great! Pleasure doing business with you!"

A few more whispered words at the door and the Jasper was gone. Orthoclase pulled out the operating table and placed the pearl on it, then went digging around in her toolbox.

"Don't we have to be somewhere?" Ginger piped up.

"We sure do," Orthoclase said breezily, slamming down some sort of gun-needle-type tool. "But I just gave myself seventeen procedures to do, so we should get at least a little of it done before we go."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Steven asked, acutely aware that Orthoclase had given herself this work for Steven's sake.

"Maybe," Orthoclase agreed. "Stand here, you can hand me stuff."

She pushed a lever on the gun-needle and a pulsing wave of energy washed over the pearl on the operating table. Slowly, blinking in and out, the pearl's body manifested until she was lying on the table, eyes closed as though she were sleeping.

Steven gulped. As with Ginger, the resemblance to Pearl was uncanny even though this pearl had curly blonde hair and a yellowish tint to her skin...what was left of it, anyway. There were sections of her mass missing, including all of the fingers on one hand and most of her right leg below the knee.

"What happened to her?" Steven asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"Barracks pearl," Orthoclase said, as if that explained anything. "They hardly ever come out of there in one piece...course, this one got taken out when one of the Jaspers went rogue and then _someone_ saw fit to pack her full of explosives."

 _Explosives?_

The look on Steven's face must have been quite a sight, because Orthoclase laughed softly and rubbed the top of his head.

"Don't worry pebble, we got them out before she could get herself blown up," she assured him. "She's still in bad shape, but she's better than she was. That Jasper's been paying off her repair bill for orbits."

 _Oh!_

Steven could have kicked himself. He always forgot his gem abilities right when they were most useful.

"I think I can fix her," he offered, standing on tiptoe to reach the pearl on the table.

"What, you studied pearl repair manuals for sixteen orbits?" Orthoclase laughed. "She's got fissure cracks all across..."

Orthoclase's voice trailed away after Steven licked his palm and swiped it across the pearl's gem. Suddenly her fingers and missing leg grew back, the scratches and gouges across her body vanished and her gem reformed as shiny and whole as a new one. She remained asleep.

"Holy Core," Orthoclase breathed slowly, stepping back from the table. "What...how did you do that?"

"I have healing spit," Steven announced, somewhat proudly.

"Healing...spit?" she frowned. "Healing tears, I've heard of, but no-one's been able to do that in thousands of orbits...what kind of quartz are you?"

"One of a kind?" Steven offered with a shrug.

"Well, whatever you are, you just saved me a huge job," Orthoclase said sheepishly, rubbing the back of her head.

"Perhaps she learned the art on her hatching planet," Ginger said.

 _I need to talk to them about calling me 'she' all the time._

"Maybe," Orthoclase agreed. "So this just freed up the rest of our cycle, which is great because we really need to get downcity. I'm not in the mood for the standing seats."

…..

Before they got to where they were going, they were stopped at two checkpoints and Ginger was given that throat-check device at both of them, to Orthoclase's annoyance.

"It's based on a stupid old rumour," she told Steven when he asked. "Supposedly the renegade pearl was infected with a virus that made her act erratically, so pearls have all these 'safety' checks done when they're out in public."

"What are they trying to find?" Steven asked, wincing at the sound of the metal crank operating on Ginger's jaw behind him.

"I don't even think they know," Orthoclase shrugged.

Eventually, they reached a small merchant's shop where they were ushered through to an underground tunnel. Steven was covered with enough nanobytes to make him look like a standard miniature quartz, according to Orthoclase, and no gem even gave him a second glance.

The hall the tunnel lead them out to was crammed with gems, clearly upper-class gems mingling with more rough and ready types, sipping long tubes of some fizzing smoky stuff and trading gossip. Steven had never seen so many gems in one place; it made him feel dizzy.

The gems in the hall seemed to have a healthy respect for Orthoclase, they cleared out of her way as she strode with purpose towards the sunken-in seating that framed the arena at the centre of the building. Ginger was the only pearl in the hall, and Orthoclase kept both her and Steven close as they pushed through to the front to get good seats.

"I should've asked this earlier, pebble, but do you have a strong stomach?" she asked as they took their seats less than a foot from the gated wall of the arena.

"Uh, not really," he admitted, remembering the teacup fiasco.

"Right," she sighed. "Well, just look away if it gets too much. It probably won't take long anyway."

"What is all this?" he asked.

"Shredder bout," Orthoclase answered. "It's illegal, technically, but nobody cares. Hematite runs it and we need to talk to her, but she won't see us unless we get to her here."

Hopefully, it would be a simple wrestling match, nothing more, but already Steven had a sinking feeling it was going to be much worse.

"They've electrified the fence," Ginger said.

"So they have," Orthoclase hummed. "Makes sense...trying to stop her improvising I guess..."

A roar went up from the crowd as the combatant made her way to the ring. She wasn't a Jasper, she was even bigger. Green-hued, more muscle than any creature Steven had ever seen that wasn't a fusion and a cruel, mocking grin. Pretty blue gems lining the side of the arena cried out for her attention.

"Oof," Orthoclase winced. "This is going to be rough."

The gem that stepped into the other side of the ring went unnoticed while the room's attention was on the green hulking gem, but when Steven did catch sight of her his heart sank. Of course it would be a pearl.

Specifically, it was a pearl that had been deliberately trussed up to look as fluffy, dainty and harmless as possible. Steven had seen porcelain dolls in the windows of old antique shops that had that same delicate, highly breakable look by design. Her short aqua hair was festooned with a little white ribbon and her ruffled dress was a shade of pink slightly darker than her skin tone. She looked like she would shatter as soon as the green gem looked in her direction.

"Why are they doing this?" Steven asked, more to himself, with an air of despondence.

"Some gems like to see others shattered," Orthoclase answered. "It'll be over soon, don't worry."

The bell rang as the 'fighters' took their positions, and the green gem started by barreling her thick tree trunk of an arm into the pearl as hard as she could. It connected with a sickening crack. Despite himself, and his rising nausea, Steven couldn't look away. The crowd cheered as the pearl hit the floor.

She struggled to get up before the green gem planted a foot on her back and ground her back down into the floor. Then she reached over to grab the pearl's arm and pulled hard. The crowd hooted as the arm came away with a spurt of pale green blood, and the green gem tossed it over her shoulder as she raised her arms to accept the adoration of the watchers.

"Idiot," Orthoclase muttered. "She just gave her a weapon."

Steven didn't understand. Who was she referring to?

"The fence didn't work," Ginger said quietly.

"She's doomed," Orthoclase added.

It all became clear when, as the green gem was soaking up the adulation of the mob, the pearl crawled over to her own severed arm and placed the connecting end of it in her mouth. Steven watched her, awestruck, as she bit down and tore a chunk of flesh from the end and spit it out casually, leaving her with a long shard of what looked like bone sticking out. She didn't even wipe the blood from her face before she got to her feet, approached the green gem from behind, gracefully cartwheeled on her remaining hand to wrap her legs around the green gem's shoulders and pulled herself up to grab onto her neck.

She brought the bone shard down with astonishing speed across the green gem's throat, and as a geyser of blood spurted from the wound Steven just about managed to look away before she plunged the shard into the gem's eyes. After that, it was just from listening to the crowd scream, groan and shout that he knew the pearl was dismembering the green gem with ease.

"Fourteen parsecs," he heard Orthoclase whisper to Ginger. "That has to be some sort of record."

…..

When the crowd cleared, they lingered behind to talk to the muttering gem who was giving instructions to the pearl in the ring, who was awfully chipper for a gem that had lost an arm and stabbed someone to death with it.

"Hematite," Orthoclase called, laughing when the gem winced. "New strategy didn't pay off, I see."

"No," the gem said sourly. "But more fool me for thinking it would."

"So about my proposal..."

"No. Are you seriously asking me that? After _this_ fight?"

"This is the best time to ask," Orthoclase shrugged. "Come on, the crowd knows what to expect now. You can't expect them to show up cycle after cycle to watch that pearl murder a whole bunch of stupid gems."

"And yet they do," Hematite countered.

"Give it a break for a while," Orthoclase cajoled. "Anticipation will make them pay more. Shut down the ring for a few cycles, they'll come back more eager than ever. You know I saw your Larimar down at the Silverdene, right?"

Hematite muttered something unintelligible under her breath.

"She's probably dying to see you...take a break, tell her you ditched the murder pearl for a while. Take her out somewhere nice. Couldn't hurt."

"Why do you want the 'murder pearl' so badly, anyway?" Hematite asked. The pearl, seemingly unruffled by being called the murder pearl, sat at the edge of the ring swinging her feet idly. Her severed arm sat on her lap, and the fingers of her other hand moved gently above it.

"I got things to do, could get rough," Orthoclase shrugged. "You understand, regular muscle just won't cut it. How's about I throw in a free remodel for Larimar's pearl, to sweeten the deal?"

Hematite hummed and shuffled her feet, and finally sighed.

"All right, get it out of here," she said, opening the gate and beckoning the pearl out. "But if any of this gets traced back to me..."

"It won't. You have my word."

Hematite stomped away, muttering darkly to herself. The pearl stood to attention in front of Orthoclase, blinking owlishly up at her.

"Right, first things first," Orthoclase told her, folding her arms. "We don't want anyone dead on this assignment, okay? Maimed maybe, definitely poofed, but no death. Think you can handle that?"

"Of course," the murder pearl answered sweetly.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Four**

Note: This has been a busy week but I'm more or less back on track, thank goodness. I'm hoping to set up a blog soon to archive all of my writing in one place, along with any fanart I've received and anything else I've done over the last few years. When I started writing fanfics back in prehistoric times everyone had archives, webrings and mailing lists and I'm an old fashioned girl at heart sometimes. I'll link it once it's finished.

Double note: If you haven't already, I suggest you read A String of Pearls before continuing. Most of the OC characters I've written about there will be popping up here as well (and it includes the origins of Murder Pearl.)

…..

New to the list of things Steven had to be very worried about (along with Pearl's disappearance, the awful nightmares that were probably foreshadowing of something unpleasant and his dwindling supply of food) was that the unfortunately-named Murder Pearl would live up to that name at some point by turning on him.

As it was, she had found some sort of pole somewhere in the workshop and was methodically sharpening the end with blankly serene expression on her face. It was unbelievably creepy, and yet Ginger, who was sitting directly in the line of the sharpened pole should Murder Pearl decide to skewer someone with it, was calmly ignoring them both to fiddle with a holographic screen of data.

Complicating matters further was the third pearl in the workshop, the one Steven had healed with his magical spit. She was hiding under a table covered with a tarp, (and had been since she regained consciousness) the edges of her feet were the only part of her visible. He had been told in no uncertain terms by both Orthoclase and Ginger to leave her alone until her Jasper returned. He could hear her sniffling under there, and that was awkward on top of all the other awkwardness.

Distantly, Steven wondered if Garnet and Amethyst were worried. He had been gone for, he estimated, three days. They had left him alone during missions for longer periods of time, they had always been quite lackadaisical in this manner. He knew Greg would be worried by now, and probably Connie too. Sadie as well, and maybe the cool kids.

 _Maybe I should go back for a little while. Get more food, let everyone know I'm okay, tell them we have a plan..._

Even as he thought about it he knew he couldn't. He was neck-deep in Homeworld's criminal underground, and if television had taught him one thing it was that criminals tended to disappear without a trace. If he left he probably wouldn't be able to find them again.

As he stewed, his stomach made its feelings known. Loudly.

Ginger swiveled in her chair.

"Are you unwell?" she asked, again with more curiosity than concern.

"Hah, no...I'm just kind of hungry..." he laughed nervously. Murder Pearl was also looking at him.

"Hungry?" Ginger asked, tilting her head and blinking owlishly.

"Yeah, uh...where I come from, we put things in our mouths..."

...he didn't miss both of the pearls flinching ever so slightly...

"...to give us energy and make us feel...happy, I guess. I brought food but I'm running kind of low now," he finished.

Ginger hummed thoughtfully, and Murder Pearl laid down her murder stick for a moment.

"The higher caste gems ingest gallium and compound mix for recreational purposes," Murder Pearl said. "I don't think it gives them energy..."

"No, it doesn't," Ginger agreed. "But those are chemical...it sounds like the Steven requires...organic matter?"

"Just Steven is fine," Steven piped in.

"I will think on this," Ginger told him. "We cannot have you unwell at this stage in the plan."

"Wow, okay, thanks!" Steven blurted out gratefully. It probably wouldn't be anything like a donut or a cheeseburger but at least it would be _something..._

Orthoclase burst into the workshop then in her usual loud fashion. At some point she had donned some sort of chain-link head decoration and painted triangles under her eyes, and the little kid in Steven for a moment reflected on how effortlessly cool she was. She was carrying what looked like a burlap sack and tossed out the contents on the operating table.

"Jasper came through for us," she said with a careless but triumphant shrug. "Six pearls, all deregistered."

Steven peered over at them, until Orthoclase beckoned him closer so he could examine them closely. One was cracked badly, one was covered in scratches but apart from that they were all in good shape. One was significantly smaller than the others.

"That's a seed pearl," Orthoclase explained as Steven gingerly touched the miniature one.

"Seed pearl?"

"Yeah, it was the fashion for a while to make them smaller," she continued. "Lasted about four orbits before they were discontinued. I thought they'd all been processed but I guess not."

Homeworld really was a terribly strange place. Gems talked about making other gems in miniature, like some sort of weird hobby.

"Those two are damaged," Steven said, changing the subject. "Can I heal them?"

"Go ahead," Orthoclase said with a sweeping gesture. "Less work for me if you do."

Licking his palm, he fixed the cracked pearl and then the scratched one. For good measure, he fixed the others too, just in case they had damage he couldn't see.

"Remind me to get you filling some tubes for me before you go back to Planet Whatsit," Orthoclase said, sinking onto the couch and throwing one foot into Ginger's lap.

…..

A few hours and one fitful nap on the couch later, the pearls regenerated.

Steven ended up naming them (in his head) after the Disney Princesses because that was all he could think of. One of them (he thought it was the one that had been scratched to pieces) had a long elaborate braid that reached her ankles so once he had dubbed her Rapunzel the rest of them naturally followed.

The one that looked like she had actual gold threads running through her hair: Aurora.

The pale blue one in tattered indigo and the remains of a fancy hairstyle: Cinderella, obviously.

The silver one with the long white hair: Elsa. She was the one who had been badly cracked.

The pale green one with the red hair...he kept switching between Anna and Ariel. It was hard to know until she opened her mouth.

And the seed pearl, who stood no taller than Steven's waist...Thumbelina. (He knew it wasn't Disney but it might as well have been.)

"I assume you all know the plan," Orthoclase announced, confusing Steven because not one pearl had said a word to anyone.

Still, they all nodded in perfect unison. Even Murder Pearl.

"Great. If you have any questions, ask Pearl. In fact, I have a question right now. What in Core's name are we supposed to do now?"

She punctuated her question by poking Ginger's shoulder with the tip of her foot.

"I have located a loom to centre our structure on," Ginger replied, barely responding to Orthoclase's needling. "It is isolated, and large enough to shelter over fifty pearls."

"Sounds great," Orthoclase drawled. "What's wrong with it?"

"The owner will take some convincing..."

"I knew it..."

"But I believe we have something she wants."

"Hm," Orthoclase mused. "Okay, we can work with that. Get her on the line..."

"She won't respond. We have to go there ourselves. And she may not let us in."

Orthoclase sighed, flopped across the couch. All the pearls kept their silence, but Steven noticed their hands and fingers moving gently. Maybe they were nervous. Steven certainly was.

"Well, we might as well try," she said at last. "We'll go next cycle, suns are going down."

With that, she was gone. There were crashing sounds in the back of the workshop where she was clearly setting up to work for the rest of the night. That left Steven alone with the pearls.

"So," he began, addressing the one he dubbed Elsa. "I'm glad to see I was able to fix that crack in your gem...are you feeling better?"

"Yes, quite," she said faintly. "Thank you."

"What happened? Is it okay for me to ask, I don't mean to be rude..."

"That's okay," she said in that same oddly serene way they all seemed to have of talking. "I was owned by several Jaspers, they did not treat me gently."

That sick squirmy feeling was getting to be something Steven was used to. There were implications rife in that little sentence but he couldn't dwell on it, for the sake of his own sanity.

 _I need to find Pearl and get the hell out of here._

"I'm sorry," he mumbled lamely.

"Not your doing," Elsa replied in a way that was almost sweet.

"Did you fix my scratches too?" Rapunzel asked, so quietly he could barely hear her.

"Yes, I did," Steven replied. "Is that okay with you?"

"Quite," she said. "But my owner may be confused when I am returned. If I am returned."

 _If. Why if?_

"Why's that?" Steven asked, knowing he was going to regret it but unable to stop himself.

"She made most of the scratches."

Steven looked away, struggling to find words. It was only then that he noticed that Thumbelina had at some point climbed down from her spot on the operating table and was kneeling at the gap between the floor and the tarp that covered the Jasper's pearl. She was silent but her fingers were moving. The sniffling that had been a constant since the pearl woke up had stopped.

…..

When Homeworld's suns rose again, they set out for...wherever they were going next. Steven ate the last of his rations, hoping Ginger would come up with something for him to do foodwise soon. They passed a checkpoint, and as usual Ginger was checked with that horrible machine.

"Why can't they just ask her to open her mouth?" Steven whispered to Orthoclase as they watched.

"Pearls won't open their mouths, even under orders," Orthoclase whispered back.

Steven blinked. He hadn't really expected an answer, just assumed the officials did it to be mean.

"Why?" he asked, baffled.

"No-one really knows," Orthoclase responded. "It's just some sort of pearl-wide trait, they can't do it even if they want to. It means you have to crack their jaws for checks and certain repairs, and they'd probably choose to avoid that if they could..."

With every passing moment, life just seemed to get bleaker and bleaker for pearls. Where would it end?

Ginger was rubbing her jaw when she was returned.

"I think that Topaz has a grudge against me," Orthoclase said as they walked away. "And she takes it out on you. Sorry about that."

"That's okay," Ginger replied. She sounded tired.

They walked for a long time. The public transport system only brought them so far, and it was clear whoever they were going to see was well-off. The residences they passed got bigger and bigger the further they went, until they arrived at a truly enormous estate on the outer edge of the city.

Orthoclase whistled as she rang the doorbell.

"This is really something," she hissed. "I feel like I'm going to be tossed in isopod just for being here..."

The door creaked open, and standing in front of them was yet another pearl.

"My owner is not taking visitors today."

"Yeah, we figured that," Orthoclase drawled. "But we have an urgent matter to discuss with her so we aren't going to let her blow us off."

"Just close the blasted door, Pearl!" a voice shouted from inside the estate.

"I suggest you give her different orders unless you want me to yank her right here and now," Orthoclase called back.

There was a moment of silence, during which Steven didn't know where to look. He hadn't expected Orthoclase to make outright _threats..._

...and then a sharp tapping noise heralded the arrival of another gem, who gently pushed the pearl out of the way. Steven looked up...

 _Lapis?_

 _...no, it's not._

This gem looked much older, far more severe than Lapis even at her angriest. It put Steven in mind of the dowager queen of some exiled nation, or something. She was dressed in what looked like an evening gown, long and straight, and her hair was pinned back immaculately in a perfectly formed bun.

The pearl looked almost like a daughter or a younger sister of this dowager. She was dressed in a shorter dress with a fuller skirt, her hair simply tied back with a green ribbon.

Neither of them looked like the kind of gem Orthoclase would ever associate with.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't call the Amethyst squad," the Lapis growled, squaring up to this gem who could easily break her in half.

"Well, Pearl? Have you got a good reason for her?" Orthoclase asked Ginger.

"Yes."

The Lapis turned to Ginger, confusion masking her annoyance.

"We have need of your pearl's skills," Ginger began.

Incredibly, the Lapis' face softened. She looked from Ginger to her own pearl and back.

"In return, we can offer you music that has never been heard by any gem before," Ginger finished.

Orthoclase shot a look down at Steven, a _what-the-hell-kind-of-plan-is-this_ sort of look.

But the Lapis sighed, straightened and opened her door fully.

"You'd best come inside then," she said. "Don't touch anything."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Five**

Note: I'm currently working on an archive of all my work over at dreamwidth, back when I started writing (terrible) fanfiction as a teenager everyone had archives, shrines, webrings and mailing lists and I got a wee bit nostalgic. Please follow me there if you enjoy my writing, there may be work there that can't be found on A03. It's still under construction at the moment, I had a lot more work than even I realized.

…..

Steven couldn't stop himself from staring at the Lapis. She didn't look that similar to the Lapis he knew, not really, but she looked close enough to be unnerving. He'd just about gotten used to the pearls' sharp resemblance to Pearl in form but not in behavior, but this stern patrician gem just freaked him out.

She brought them into an enormous lounge area, big enough to fit thirty gems comfortably, and bid them sit and explain themselves. Her pearl handed Orthoclase a small glass tube of something fizzy.

"Right, I'll try to keep this brief," Orthoclase began, clapping a hand on Steven's shoulder. "The quartz here has lost a pearl, and she asked for my help to retrieve it."

"Lost?" Lapis said, arching one eyebrow. "Can she not buy a new one?"

"It's he, actually," Steven corrected awkwardly, inwardly squirming at the thought of trying to buy a new pearl to replace Pearl.

" _He_ needs this one back, it's a matter of urgency," Orthoclase explained. "The pearl has some sort of information on it he needs, and it's got sentimental value too...I'm sure you understand that?"

Lapis snorted, but all the same something about her...softened.

"I can understand, I suppose," she said. "We do develop our attachments to the most unlikely of objects. But I don't understand why you need _my_ pearl."

"Your pearl is skilled at playing the symphonaria, is that correct?" Ginger piped up.

Lapis stiffened.

"How do you know that?" she asked, tense around the eyes and mouth.

"Pearls hear things that other gems do not," Ginger answered, casting her gaze to the floor.

Lapis looked over at her pearl, who stood so still she might have been an actual ornament. She sighed.

"It's true, she plays. In some ways I think she's better than I ever was," she said with a hint of bitterness. "And how is this supposed to help you find a missing pearl?"

Orthoclase looked to Ginger to explain. Ginger's eyes remained rooted to the floor.

"It's some sort of pearl communication exercise," Orthoclase said when it became clear that Ginger wouldn't speak again. "They can communicate over long distances without being heard apparently, but its reach is limited. From what I can tell, it needs something from your pearl to..."

"An anchor."

The other pearl spoke so suddenly they all jumped.

"Sorry, what?" Orthoclase asked.

"It needs an anchor to build on," the pearl continued, shooting what might have been a nervous glance at Lapis. "To spread out as far as possible without getting lost or blown away. Voices alone won't do it."

"Is that what you've been doing all this time?" Lapis asked. "When you think I'm not listening?"

The pearl's mouth shut and she lowered her gaze as Ginger did, shrinking in on herself.

"Oh, don't be worried," Lapis demurred. "It's been my pleasure to hear you play, even if you tried to keep it from me...you're not in trouble."

The tension didn't leave either pearl; for the first time Steven realized he was getting very good at reading pearl body language.

"What will you do to make this 'anchor'?" Lapis asked, now sounding less stern and more curious.

"With your permission, I can work the melody structure through the symphonaria into a loom," the pearl explained, still staring at the floor. "The voices can be woven through it to support them all. It should give the reach that's required."

"Well, that sounds like something I'd want to see," Lapis said. "But I was told I would hear music I would never hear again..."

"We need a minimum of fifty pearls to use their voices," Orthoclase told her. "Fifty pearls, maybe more, singing in unison. Not something you see-or hear- often."

"How many pearls do you have now?" Lapis asked.

"Eight. Excluding yours."

"Hm...and how do you suppose you'll get the additional forty-two?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Orthoclase shrugged.

"This sounds like a messy plan," Lapis said with a scowl. "I don't like mess. But I must admit, I am curious..."

She hummed to herself for a moment, looking over at the gigantic instrument in the centre of the room. Steven had taken it for a large sculpture, but after staring at it he could see it was a musical device. It looked like a pipe organ turned on its side and covered with harp strings.

"You have my permission," Lapis said finally. "When you get your fifty pearls. My pearl will not be going anywhere until then, and neither will my symphonaria."

"Agreed," Orthoclase said with a smile, bouncing to her feet. "We'll be in touch...and in the meantime, if your pearl needs remodeling..."

"No, she never will," Lapis said, scowl returning. "Pearl, please escort our visitors out."

Orthoclase muttered a little under her breath as the pearl brought them back to the door and ushered them outside.

"I will work on the loom until you return," she said, mostly to Ginger, and then she was gone.

…..

When they got back to the workshop, Orthoclase left for another job, taking the Disney pearls with her, and Steven slept for a while on the couch. When he woke up, Ginger tried to hand him a glass jar full of some murky liquid.

"I think if you ingest this it will make you feel better," she said.

"What's in it?" Steven asked, not wanting to be ungrateful but also balking at the way the stuff bubbled.

"Water, mostly," Ginger explained. "And some complex compounds suitable for organics. I scanned your make-up as you were resting, I think I have synthesized most of what you need."

She had worked hard, and she didn't exactly _have_ to, so really he owed it to her to at least try it. Gulping, he pinched his nose and took a swallow...

...actually, it wasn't half bad. It was thick like a milkshake and had no real taste, it left a chalky residue on his tongue, but it filled his stomach for the first time since leaving Earth and he didn't feel sick afterwards.

"That's pretty good," he told Ginger. "Thanks a lot, I feel way better..."

"Is there any way I can improve it?" she asked.

"Well, I guess it's kind of bland," he admitted. "But it doesn't really matter..."

"I will work on the taste," she said, and turned back to her console.

In two more gulps he was finished with the stuff, and he let out a small burp. It was enough to make Murder Pearl look up. He gulped again.

 _But that's not fair, is it? She hasn't done anything..._

In fact, beyond sharpening the pole that now lay at her feet, she hadn't done anything for quite a while. She just maintained a steady vigil from the couch, occasionally looking over at him or Ginger, and watching the door.

Then, suddenly, she rose to her feet. Ginger spun in her chair, she made some sort of movement with her hand and in the next moment Murder Pearl was gone. Ginger reached out and grabbed Steven, pushed him towards one of the walls. She removed a grate from the wall and pushed him into the vent.

"Stay in there, don't make a sound," she hissed, covering the vent again with the grate.

 _What...?_

The door burst open.

Steven could just about see Ginger through the vent, but the two gems who had broken in were too big to see fully. He could see their giant biceps as they pushed things over, and he saw their powerful legs when they kicked barrels and boxes in the workshop around.

"Look at all this contraband," one of them whistled, and with a start Steven realized she sounded eerily similar to Amethyst. "Do we have room at the impound for all of this?"

"We're about to find out," the other laughed.

"Where's your owner, little pearl?" the first one asked, bending over to look Ginger in the eye.

Her face was similar to Amethyst's, familiar enough to make Steven queasy, especially as she loomed over Ginger in such a threatening way.

"She is not here," Ginger answered solemnly.

"I can see that," the Amethyst said with a decidedly evil grin. "Let me make it clear...I _order_ you to tell me where she is."

With a sinking feeling, Steven realized why Orthoclase didn't tell him or Ginger where she was going when she left the workshop, why she _never_ told either of them. Pearls couldn't obey an order to release information they didn't have.

"I cannot," Ginger said with a shrug.

 _I should do something. I should help her._

But he couldn't bring himself to move, even as the Amethyst picked her up by the neck and threw her against the operating table. She had put him in the vent for a reason, if he got out he could easily make things worse. Knowing that didn't make it any easier to watch, especially when the Amethyst picked up one of Orthoclase's scalpels and dangled it over Ginger's eye. The other Amethyst picked up a tool that looked an awful lot like the thing used to crack pearls' jaws at checkpoints.

"What does this one do?" she asked with a laugh, clicking the mechanism a few times. "Should we test it out?"

"Sure," the Amethyst holding the scalpel said. "We've got time before your owner gets home, why not have a little _fun_?"

There was something in the way she said _fun,_ something that went beyond the threat of torture, something that made Steven feel like he would be sick. He clamped a hand over his mouth to stifle it. From where he was he couldn't see the operating table properly, but he could see the Amethyst's hand trailing over Ginger's leg, reaching under her skirt...

 _No, no, no, stop!_

A wet cracking noise split the tension, followed by a strange whooping noise and the operating table being turned over, knocking Ginger to the floor. The Amethyst was stood in an unnatural crouch, held in place by the pole that Murder Pearl had so diligently sharpened...

...until it was pulled out, and the Amethyst hit the floor hard. She poofed into her gem with her partner looking on, dumbstruck.

Murder Pearl was on the ceiling, clinging onto the tiny divots in the light fixtures with her feet. Just as the remaining Amethyst caught sight of her, she scurried away, skittering across the ceiling like a spider. The Amethyst turned, crouched into a defensive position, but she might as well have had a target painted on her back. Murder Pearl caught her with a hook she'd found somewhere, lifted her off the floor and did something to her in the shadows that made a crunching sound. A gem clattered to the floor.

Steven burst out of the vent.

"Oh jeez, Ginger, are you okay? Did they hurt you? Do you need...?" he spluttered helplessly, trying to help her to her feet.

"I'm fine," Ginger replied, not even seeming shaken by the ordeal. "But we've been compromised. We have to move."

"Should I shatter them?" Murder Pearl asked in a tone that could have been asking about the weather.

"No, don't," Ginger told her. "We can dump them somewhere. But you need to get into my gem."

Murder Pearl dropped the hook and pole, took two steps and jumped straight into Ginger's gem, vanishing with a tiny plinking noise. Ginger pressed a whole bunch of buttons, packed equipment and supplies into her gem, as Steven followed her fretting.

"Who were they?" he asked, knowing he sounded on the verge of hysterics but unable to stop.

"Black market crackdown squad," Ginger explained. "Someone sold us out."

For someone who had just been threatened with extreme bodily harm by two very large gems, Ginger was remarkably calm. It was enviable, Steven would have given anything to feel calm right then.

"We will need to torch this workshop," she told him. "And get a message to Orthoclase to meet us somewhere."

"Okay, well I could stay here in case she comes back," Steven offered. "And you could..."

"I am not permitted outside without supervision," Ginger cut in. "No pearl is."

"Oh," Steven mumbled.

"You'll have to pretend to be my owner until we can meet with Orthoclase," she continued. "But you don't have any of the documents and there's no time to forge some...we'll have to bypass the checkpoints."

"Can we do that?" he asked.

"We can," she said. "If we go through the lower precincts. They aren't patrolled."

Relief flooded Steven's body and mind, but it was too good to be true.

"The lower precincts are notorious for high crime rates," Ginger told him. "It's very likely I could be stolen there."

That sick feeling returned. If Ginger was stolen, Orthoclase would never finish the job and Pearl would stay lost. Not to mention what Ginger would be going through...

"We'll have to walk quickly, before it gets dark," Ginger continued, seemingly unruffled by walking straight into danger. "I know somewhere we can go. If they let us in."

She covered him with nanobytes, set a torch burning in a pool of liquid in the old workshop and grabbed the two Amethysts. Stepping out into the city without Orthoclase to guide him, having to take ownership of a sentient being, knowingly walking into an urban war zone...could it get much worse?

 _If they let us in. If. What happens if not?_

Before they reached Precinct 19, Ginger tossed the Amethysts into the runoff canal by the side of a factory.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Six**

Note: I finally have my archive almost up and running, and it really feels like I stepped back in time. I'm thinking of putting some of my original work up there, free of charge, on a regular update schedule just like my fanfiction. I just really like the format of writing and posting on a weekly basis when I can manage it. Thoughts?

Also, I originally planned on having Steven give Murder Pearl a name, but it seems like a few people have gotten attached to calling her Murder Pearl, including myself, so I'm on the fence. Please tell me what you think, reader input is very valued.

…..

As Steven walked further away from the manufacturing district, Ginger stepping quietly behind him, the buildings got shabbier and more broken down, the lights were dimmer and there were less transport links around. There was a palpable sense of danger in the air; this was not a good place to be.

"Should we take Murder Pearl out?" he whispered back to Ginger.

"No," she whispered back. "Too many gems around here know who she is, she'd attract too much attention."

Steven was very aware that he was shaking, and of the pools of cold sweat building under his arms, across his back, around his face. Did the nanobytes cover that?

Gems on the street were looking at them. Curious, frowning, a couple of them smiling in a way he didn't like. A sharp whistle from one of the buildings made him jump.

"What's a nice pearl like that doing hanging around here?" a raucous jeer sounded from the direction the whistle had come in.

As they passed what looked like some sort of gem equivalent to a tavern, some hulking gem with mottled yellow and white stripes grabbed Ginger, tried to pull her inside. When Steven grabbed her back and went to manifest his weapon, the gem just laughed and pushed them both away. When they turned a corner, a small green gem ran by them and pulled on Ginger's hair. From the doorway of a factory, a dark red gem stared at her, stroking the handle of some tool she had in her pocket.

 _This is a nightmare. I'm going to wake up eventually. It can't get any worse._

Through it all, Ginger was utterly calm. It was probably the only reason Steven wasn't a gibbering wreck, if she didn't seem scared then he had no reason to be, right? But then he already knew Ginger didn't really react to danger, or anything else.

"Hey pebble!" a gem shouted, and at the nickname Steven turned because he thought by some miracle it was Orthoclase. "How much?"

"How much what?" he called back, uncertain.

"How much you want for the pearl?" the gem called back. "I'll give you 3000 credits!"

"She's not for sale," he answered, grabbing Ginger's hand and pulling her away as fast as he could.

"Come on, you're just asking for it to get yanked," the gem cajoled. "At least I'll give you some cash..."

"No thank you!"

He was near tears by the time they got out of that gem's line of sight.

"It's not far now," Ginger assured him. "Two more blocks, that's all."

The way she tried to soothe him was eerily similar to how Pearl tended to talk to him when he was upset, and it just made him want to cry even more. Ginger was the one who was under threat, so why was _she_ comforting _him_?

He stormed through the two blocks with his head down, holding Ginger's hand tightly. He could feel other gems reaching out to touch her, to engage him with questions about her, but he refused to look up. When they finally got to where they needed to be, he thought he would faint with sheer relief. Ginger let him catch his breath before she knocked on the door.

"Who is it?"

"I have a message from Orthoclase," she replied to the pair of eyes that appeared through the slot in the doorway.

… _.._

"I knew Orthoclase was good," Hematite mused as they took their seats in her office. "I didn't know she was good enough to fix a pearl to tell lies."

"Please excuse the intrusion and the lie," Ginger said, lowering her gaze demurely. "But we were under threat. Our workshop was compromised by black market crackdown Amethysts. Orthoclase was out on a job at the time, only myself and the quartz were present."

Hematite hummed. She was different from Murder Pearl's owner, taller and calmer. Beside her desk, sitting at a smaller desk of her own, was a pearl, prettily attired in shades of floating pink fabric. She was taking notes on a small clear notepad.

"So what brings you here?" Hematite asked. "I don't think I need to tell you Orthoclase and I aren't exactly friends..."

"We needed somewhere secure to go until Orthoclase can come to pick us up, somewhere that bypasses the checkpoints. You run the tightest operation on this side of the city."

"True," Hematite said with a rueful smile. "But why would you think I'd turn you over to Orthoclase? You're in good shape, I could just as easily sell you and get rid of the quartz."

Steven's heartbeat was so loud he felt like everyone could hear it.

"You won't."

"Oh really? Why?"

"Because Orthoclase will owe you a favour. If you hand me back the way you found me, she will fix your pearl for free."

Hematite laughed, glancing over at her pearl (who had stopped typing.)

"My pearl is in perfect condition, she doesn't even go outside anymore," she said.

"She's malfunctioning," Ginger responded. "She has multiple hairline fractures caused by bad filler. She is completely blind in one eye and losing the sight in the other."

Hematite stopped laughing abruptly, looked back over at her pearl, who was staring at the floor from under her long sideswept hair.

"Is that true?" she asked.

The pearl nodded.

Hematite's jaw quivered, and she sighed. Her demeanor suddenly was less stern, less threatening, more thoughtful.

"You really think Orthoclase values you so highly she'd do these repairs for free?"

"If we are returned in perfect condition," Ginger replied.

"Deal," Hematite agreed. "I'll get a message out. There's a spare rest pod in the bunker, you can wait there."

One of Hematite's subordinates lead them to the underground level of the building, to where a large pod was sitting in the middle of a large cavernous room with the lid open. Ginger climbed in and gestured to him to follow, and closed the lid on them both. The little pipes around the side of the pod hummed with energy, and the interior was plush and comfortable. There weren't any blankets, but it was a bed, more or less.

Exhaustion hit Steven like a brick. He had been in a state of panic for close to four hours now, no wonder! But in the aftermath of fear, there was that awful bare feeling of being exposed, vulnerable.

"Hey, Ginger?" he said, scooting closer to her.

"Yes?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Would you mind...putting your arms around me? Only if you're comfortable with that, I mean, if you don't want to..."

"Is that an order?"

"No!" he said vehemently, shaking his head hard enough to make his headache worse. "I can't give you orders...well, I can but I won't...I'm just asking. If you don't want to do it that's okay."

The way she stared at him, the meaning was inscrutable. Pearl, by contrast, was an open book.

"I will," she agreed.

Relieved, Steven curled up alongside her and she put her arms around him. With his face pressed against her stomach and her long slim fingers laced over his chest, it felt familiar enough to sleep comfortably.

…..

It's a dream, once again he knows that in an instant, but it doesn't matter because at least Pearl is _awake_ in this one, no longer strapped to a table, no drill bearing down on her...

They're in some sort of dome, with high arching rounded walls the colour of an eggshell. She is piling little blue cubes in front of a crack in the base of the dome, as she reaches out the cubes fly into her hand from the other end of the dome, though as far as Steven can see the dome has no end, just a far horizon in the opposite direction of where Pearl is diligently filling the crack.

"Pearl!" he yells before he can stop himself. His voice bounces off the rounded walls.

Her face when she turns towards him is horrified. Her mouth opens and closes with no sound. Distracted, she stops piling the cubes and a thin crack peters out from the main, sneaks up the wall. She turns back to it, starts piling the cubes again in earnest.

"You can't be here!" she manages to shout back at him at last.

"I've been looking for you," he calls back. "I found some gems that can help me find you..."

He takes a step forward, only for some invisible force to pull him backwards, away from her.

"You _can't be here,"_ she shouts again. "I can only hold it off for so long! They can't find _you_ in here!"

She's making no sense, but now that he looks closely he can see the exhaustion in her face. There are thousands of those cubes propped up in front of the spreading crack, they are getting absorbed by whatever the force is behind the crack, something inky black with pulsing blood-red veins.

"Just hang on," he tells her, hearing the high note of panic in his voice and wincing. "We're going to find you, they promised..."

He doubts she can even hear him, because that loud whining noise that had been building outside the dome is getting louder, and now it is complimented by an earth-shaking banging sound.

But the banging is not coming from the dome, and she can't hear him because he's leaving the dream, he's waking up.

"We're going to find you," he calls once more, before he comes to.

…..

Blearily, Steven allowed Ginger to gently pull him to his feet before she opened the dome of the rest pod. Orthoclase (and boy was she a sight for sore eyes) was standing outside it, the tension in her face melting completely when she saw that they were in one piece.

"What in Core's name happened?" she asked. "Are you okay?"

"Black market crackdown Amethysts," Ginger replied.

Orthoclase hissed something under her breath, probably some sort of gem curse word.

"Did they hurt you?" she asked, notably scanning Ginger with her eyes for damage.

"No," Ginger replied.

"Yes they did," Steven blurted out. "They grabbed her by the neck and threw her at the table."

He didn't want to say what had nearly happened after, but he didn't need to, he could tell by Orthoclase's face that she already knew.

"Core's sake," she cursed again. "How did you get out?"

"Murder Pearl," Ginger replied, so unruffled by the whole thing it was almost frightening. "She cut them down. We dumped the gems in the canal."

"Good job," Orthoclase chuckled, finally relaxing a bit. "Hematite's already fingered who squealed. Some little Jade slag from the eastern sector. But they came across the workshop by chance, they were looking for something else."

"I promised Hematite you would repair her pearl in exchange for our safe return," Ginger told her.

"That's fair," Orthoclase shrugged. "Though she'll want me to do it here where she can see...hey pebble!"

"Yeah?"

"I need you to spit on this," she told him, holding out a small cloth.

When they walked back out into Hematite's office, the pearl was already lying on Hematite's desk. Orthoclase made a pantomime of taking out implements and using them but surreptitiously just wiped the pearl's gem with the cloth Steven had spit on. Sure enough, the pearl gasped a little and she was healed.

"Can you see?" Hematite asked.

"Yes. Completely," the pearl replied, looking down at her own hands in what probably passed for astonishment in pearls.

"Good. We're even now," Hematite told Orthoclase.

"Nearly," Orthoclase retorted. "What's going to happen to the Jade that squealed?"

"Already taken care of."

"Good to hear."

They left the office then, Orthoclase reducing Ginger to pearl form first because ' _only some sort of clod would walk around with a pearl out in the open around here'._

… _.._

They didn't head for a new workshop, as Steven might have assumed. Instead they took a transit line to the outskirts of the city, where rows and rows of identical square buildings stretched out for miles.

"So I learned something interesting," Orthoclase told him when there was nearly no gem left on the transit. "Pearl song-weaving is designed to be inaudible to the average gem, so getting them to sing together loud enough to project it properly is going to be tough. Lapis' pearl suggested we needed a pearl that's used to singing out loud to 'boost the weave', in her words. She even told me where to find one."

Steven nodded along, but now that the danger was officially over he was tense. The image of Pearl stacking those cubes, trying to keep whatever was behind that crack at bay, kept floating into his mind. He was now more aware of how time-sensitive their mission was, and how long it was taking to get basic components ready.

They departed the transit, and walked straight past rows of square buildings until Orthoclase picked out the one she wanted. She casually declined to introduce herself to the gem on guard at the door, and said she was there to check on their pearl.

"We don't have a pearl!" the gem sputtered, blushing. "That's illegal, everygem knows that!"

"Yeah right," Orthoclase scoffed. "Maybe I should ask your _supervisor..."_

"Okay, okay, fine," the gem hissed. "Keep your voice down, okay? I'll take you in."

The gem escorted them through the bare hallways into what looked like a sort of mess hall/recreation room for...

Jaspers. Lots of them.

All shapes and sizes from walking giants to squat, stocky little warriors. They punched each other by way of greeting and their laughter was so loud and raucous it sounded like a threat.

The Crystal Gems had just about handled one Jasper. If this went badly...

"Hey!" Orthoclase shouted at the top of her lungs.

Every Jasper went deathly silent and turned towards them. A trickle of cold sweat ran down Steven's face.

"I'm here to check out your pearl!" Orthoclase continued. "You know who I am, right?"

"Oh," one of the closest Jaspers, who looked like she could snap Orthoclase in two with no effort, said with a smile. "She's over there."

Actually _seeing_ the pearl, sitting among a cluster of gigantic Jaspers, was like seeing a mirage. She was a shade of blue so pale it was practically white, and her hair was a gradiated tone of sky blue to deep indigo, and tied up into two enormous corkscrew pigtails. Her outfit was white and fluffy, cloudlike. She looked like one exhaled breath would blow her away.

Orthoclase peered down at her, but when she reached out to touch one of the pigtails her hand was _actually slapped away_ by one of the Jaspers.

"Look, don't touch," the Jasper growled.

"Okay, got it," Orthoclase agreed. "But I'm going to have to touch her a little, okay? Anyway, I hear she can sing?"

"You heard right," one of the other Jaspers scoffed.

"She's even better than White Lapis," another chipped in.

"Okay, good," Orthoclase said. "Can I get a demonstration?"

They heartily agreed to this, picking up the pearl like some sort of tiny puppet and setting her on one of the mess tables. The Jaspers eagerly gathered around, pushing each other out of the way to get the best place to watch.

When she did sing, it wasn't as loud as any of the singers Steven had heard growing up, or even as loud as Pearl singing when she did random chores in the house to pass the time. But it was high and clear as flowing water, and she danced to match the tune. It was a peppy upbeat song about being proud of a gem you loved, and the Jaspers were eating it up.

When she finished and neatly curtseyed, some of the Jaspers were actually wiping away tears.

"Oh Core I love that one," the Jasper closest to Steven sighed.

"...okay," Orthoclase said, her expression inscrutable. "Right, I've seen enough. This is what we need. Jaspers, I need to take your pearl."

You could have cut the tension with a chainsaw. Steven actually heard knuckles being cracked in the crowd.

"I'm not going to take her away permanently," Orthoclase continued, seemingly unafraid of the many, many Jaspers that looked ready to beat her to death. "Just for a little while. I have a project in the works that needs a pearl that can sing at a decent volume. And I'm not just asking to take her with nothing in it for you."

She stood up, and took out a cloth to unwrap and place on the table. Six objects lay on the cloth.

 _The Disney pearls._

"If you lend me your pearl for this project, not only do I offer you my services as a remodeler and repair-gem, but I offer you your choice of any two of these pearls to add to your barracks."

Steven felt like he was going to vomit. He'd forgotten, in all this time, that he was dealing with one of Homeworld's most notorious criminals. A gem that, for all she had done for him so far, had no issues with giving away these pearls to suit her plan.

 _What did you think was going to happen to them?_

All around him, the Jaspers were howling, incredulous, couldn't believe their luck. Their pearl gazed down at the pearls on the cloth, serene, no clear expression on her face.


	7. Chapter 7

**Missing**

 **Chapter Seven**

Note: To add a touch of levity to my usual grimdark fare, parts of this chapter are going to be very, very silly. It's possible you can tell that idol anime are a guilty pleasure of mine.

…..

Orthoclase, Steven and, once she'd regenerated, Ginger left the mess hall for a smaller office-type room as the Jaspers made their choice. The Disney pearls had regenerated as well, and were being judged on one of the tables under the close supervision of their Kunzite officer.

Steven was glad they had left the hall, because he couldn't bear watching the pearls get examined like cuts of meat in a butcher's shop any longer. It was bad enough when they were in gem form; once they could see their potential clients, and hear what was being said about them, it would be so much harder not to just scoop them all back up and run away with them.

"We'll get the singing one," Orthoclase assured him, mistaking his quiet for worry. "They're desperate enough to agree to lend her out temporarily in return for two more pearls. Not surprising, really. This is the most crowded barracks I've ever seen."

Steven nodded glumly, and Orthoclase's eyes narrowed. Even Ginger seemed to be paying attention, in a vague way.

"What's up, pebble? You crack your gem or something?" she probed, poking at Steven's forehead.

"No," he mumbled. "I'm just..."

He trailed off; how could he even explain? It seemed to be an accepted fact on Homeworld that pearls were to be bought, sold and traded as gems saw fit. How could Orthoclase even understand why he was upset?

But something shifted in her expression, and she sighed.

"You don't want me to give the pearls to these Jaspers, is that it?"

Swallowing, Steven nodded.

"Well, peb...what did you _think_ I was going to do with them when we've got your pearl back?"

"I don't know," Steven shrugged. "I thought you'd bring them somewhere else..."

"I can't keep six pearls, pebble," she laughed, not unkindly. "I just about get away with keeping the remodels out of sight, and I can barely keep the one I own safe as it is. Having six pearls just means six more ways for me to get caught."

Steven could feel Ginger's eyes on him, distantly he wondered what she thought of all this.

"Listen," Orthoclase continued, kneeling down to look him in the eye. "Those pearls are impounded. That means no-one is coming back for them, their paperwork has been voided. That leaves them with two places to go; the black market or the processing plant. I don't think you'd be happy about them going to either of those places."

She was right. He didn't know what the processing plant was, but he knew it wasn't good.

"These Jaspers are pretty weird, but they seem like they treat their pearl okay. I know for a fact they've had her for a long time, and she still looks in good shape. This is the best place they can hope for in their situation. Understand?"

Well, once she'd put it that way...it didn't seem fair that only two of the pearls would get to stay.

…..

When they went back inside, the choice still had not been made. In fact, things had deteriorated badly and the Kunzite was trying (and failing) to maintain order.

The Jaspers had split off into factions, each supporting a different pearl, and they were all arguing loudly with each other. A group had even rallied around the pearl they already owned, seemingly so she wouldn't feel like she was being replaced.

"This one is clearly the better choice," Steven heard one Jasper shout over at Elsa's group. "She's got the longest hair, she matches our pearl the best!"

"That's stupid," one of Elsa's Jaspers retorted. "This one is BLUE! The colours match, that's way more important!"

"We should pick _this_ one, because her colours are the opposite and that makes way more sense, you clod!"

"I think they forgot they get to pick two," Orthoclase whispered.

Steven couldn't see Thumbelina anywhere, and for a moment he panicked. But he eventually spotted her exactly where he couldn't have ever imagined her being; clutched in the giant hands of a Jasper who was loudly sobbing.

"This is... the cutest thing... I've ever seen," the Jasper gasped in between sobs. "I _neeeeeed_ it!"

Thumbelina responded by patting the Jasper's head with a quiet 'there, there', which just made her cry even harder.

"This is never going to end," Orthoclase groaned. "We should go with plan B..."

But now Steven was determined to get at least two of these pearls a halfway decent home, and an idea struck him.

"We should get the pearls to perform," he suggested. "Then they can judge them on that. It might be easier."

"I'm willing to try anything as long as it's quick," Orthoclase muttered.

…..

The Kunzite took very little convincing. She even managed to set Steven up with a small backstage area so he could prepare the pearls for their performances. He took Ginger with him to aid the process; Orthoclase declined and went to get something called gallium smoke with Kunzite in the office.

Ginger suggested they check into the mainframe to pick up popular songs for the pearls. Before she'd put in that vital piece of advice, Steven's plan was to sing the entire Disney back catalogue for the pearls, hoping they'd make do without the backing tracks, right keys or context. Although he had spent a lot of time back at the workshop explaining why he had given them their particular names, he wasn't sure just how much they actually understood.

And he still kind of wanted Elsa to sing 'Let it Go.'

"They need base outfits," Ginger told him, flipping through some sort of digital holographic catalogue. "They can use their gems to project onto them temporarily."

"Do we have any money to do that?" he asked.

"The ones in this column are free," she told him, pointing to a list of very plain outfits.

Cinderella in particular needed cleaning up, because she'd been a mess ever since she was picked up and, as much as he wanted to help her, he hadn't wanted to make her feel bad about it. This was the perfect excuse. Of course, when he told her to pick something, she just looked at him blankly.

"Okay, I'll pick then..." he mumbled. "Uh, how about this one? It's got a scarf for your hair...and you could change it into something fancier at the end, I saw someone do that in a music video once and it was really cool..."

She nodded along as though she understood, but Steven had a sinking feeling she wasn't going to be picked.

Aurora was easy. She was already fancy, and according to Ginger she had only ever had two owners; the Larimar who had bought her brand new and the gem that stole her and then dumped her in an alleyway. Even in a very plain white sheath she looked expensive. She did listen closely when Steven told her about the blue and pink colour-change gown from the Sleeping Beauty movie, so he had high hopes for her.

He was worried Rapunzel's long hair would trip her up if she tried to dance too much, and he didn't want to pile it on top of her head in case it weighed her down, so Ginger tied it in a series of looped braids until it looked something like modern art. Her dress was ankle-length, sort of flowy. He figured she would do well, at the very least she was always nice to look at.

Ariel (he decided on Ariel in the end because she and Elsa didn't seem as close as they could have been) didn't really get the concept of mermaids, but she understood that some Lapis performers had a water-theme in their acts and vaguely wanted to do something similar. He was able to get a sea-green dress for her from the free section of the catalogue, with little fluffy bits on the hems that looked a bit like seafoam. What exactly she was going to do with that, he had no idea.

Thumbelina was the easiest. She looked cute in anything, but he played it up by styling her to look sort of Shirley-Temple-esque. If it was good enough for the most popular child actress of the 20th century, it was good enough for what was probably the tiniest pearl on Homeworld.

He was still debating over whether he should push 'Let it Go' on Elsa when he noticed Ginger and Elsa doing that moving-finger-thing that seemed to pass as talking between pearls.

"What's she saying?" he blurted out, and then cursed himself for his nosiness when they both turned owl-eyed stares at him.

"She is asking about Murder Pearl," Ginger replied after a slight hesitation.

"Oh," Steven laughed awkwardly. "What about Murder Pearl? Do you think she wants to take part? Probably not though, she's shattered a lot of Jaspers, right?"

"She has," Ginger agreed. "But if that is a reason not to take part, then Elsa should not take part."

"What? Why?" Steven spluttered.

"I have killed Jaspers too," Elsa told him, smiling a faint smile.

A cold trickle of sweat ran down Steven's spine.

"That is not entirely correct," Ginger said. "She did not kill them herself. She drove them to madness and they often died in the aftermath."

"These Jaspers are not the same as my old owners," Elsa said, still holding that faint smile in place. "I see no reason to end their lives."

Steven couldn't find a single way to respond. He just croaked out some nonsense word or two and left them to go put Aurora into position.

He never did get to introduce Elsa to 'Let it Go.'

…..

Aurora's performance was perfect. Her voice, though quiet, was classically beautiful, her dancing was effortlessly elegant and using her gem to project swirling patterns of pink and blue on her trailing skirts was a huge hit with the crowd.

Cinderella started out with a very simple but heartfelt song about dreams (or something) but won the crowd over when at the halfway point she tore the scarf from her head and tossed it into the crowd and tied her hair up in an elegant knot with a single gesture. Her dress transformed (by way of projecting a beam of light) into a glittering ballgown and she curtseyed to thunderous applause.

Ariel had found a source of water somewhere, and along with her barefoot dancing managed to keep a number of droplets in the air to sparkle under the lights. Her dance was more complex than the others, her song relatively plain, but it was impressive to watch and the crowd lapped it up.

Rapunzel used her looped hair to great effect, treating the loops like a series of hula hoops she could flip, expand and retract at will. As complicated as the tricks were, she never missed a beat with her song, which had alternately soaring high and sweeping low notes to match the movements she made with her body and her hair.

Thumbelina didn't have to work hard; her biggest fan in the audience started sobbing again as soon as she began her song. As far as Steven could tell, it was some sort of gem commercial for a product but Thumbelina might has well have been singing high opera for the reaction it got. When she spun and winked at her superfan, the Jasper actually screamed with delight.

That only left Elsa, and it left Steven with the feeling that he didn't want them to pick her. These Jaspers seemed okay, as far as Jaspers went, and if Elsa was a danger to them...

The song Elsa picked hushed the crowd. It was a strange choice, a sort of melodic mourning tune. She didn't even dance, she just stood in the centre of the stage to sing. She moved her arms gently. No projections, no special lighting, just her voice.

For some reason, it made Steven shiver.

When she finished, the audience clapped as loudly for her as they had for the others.

…..

"It was a good effort, pebble," Orthoclase drawled. "But it might have made things worse, just sayin'."

The arguments were twice as loud now. All of the factions had reformed, but with different motivations. The Aurora and Elsa factions had actually devolved into violence, brawling in the corner of the room in front of their bemused respective pearls.

The Thumbelina superfan was still sobbing but was now also rocking on the spot.

"This is going to take forever to sort out," the Kunzite moaned.

"Okay, okay, fine," Orthoclase growled. "Everyone, for Core's sake SHUT UP! I have an announcement!"

The Jaspers stopped their brawling and scrapping and hovered over their respective pearl choices, waiting with bated breath.

"Obviously we can't let you make a decision this important," Orthoclase drawled, not even bothering to hide her irritation. "So we'll make a deal. At some point soon I may need some muscle in my corner, and when that time comes I'll be calling in a favour. No matter what it is, you drop what you're doing and come help me, got it?"

The Jaspers nodded, mumbling to each other.

"And in return you get all six pearls."

The Jaspers howled, they couldn't believe their luck. The Thumbelina superfan looked ready to have a mental breakdown.

"That's _after_ I complete my project. So I'm going to have to take your pearl with me now."

…..

The Jaspers had been subdued when they left, but they got all six Disney pearls out plus the singing pearl from the barracks. That made nine pearls altogether.

Steven couldn't shake the feeling that they were still going far too slow. The memory of that pulsing black stuff with the red veins invading Pearl's...wherever that was, it kept coming back to him.

They had forty-one pearls left to find.

Orthoclase had located a new workshop, somewhere on the outskirts just opposite the lines of the barracks buildings. This workshop had a rest pod installed, and Orthoclase told him he was free to use it.

"Remember my plan B?" she said as they set up her equipment.

"Sort of," Steven answered.

"There's another pearl that sings on a regular basis by demand," she said. "It won't be as easy getting her owner to lend her to me though. I remodeled her a while back, she's in high demand. We're going to see her next cycle."

With that little tidbit said, Orthoclase left the workshop again, ostensibly to get some more supplies. Steven wondered if she ever rested, or was she always in this state of constant motion?

He took the opportunity to put his head down in the rest pod. He must have slept for at least a few hours, because it was dark when he woke. A noise had alerted him, something familiar. He cracked open the dome of the pod and peered out into the dimly lit room.

It was Ginger.

Doubled over on the couch, she was crying so hard she seemed barely able to breathe. Her face was a wretched mask of misery. Murder Pearl sat beside her in silence, not doing anything but holding her hand.

It was a terrible thing to see; he had never seen any real emotion on Ginger's face before, not even when she was attacked. He'd at least partially convinced himself she didn't feel anything. And he knew she had waited until she thought he couldn't hear her before she let herself cry.

Steven couldn't even begin to imagine what was making her cry like that. But if he had to imagine something, he imagined what would make him cry if he'd been a pearl instead of just Steven.

 _What wouldn't I cry about?_


	8. Chapter 8

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Eight**

Note: After the silliness of last chapter, it's back to your regularly scheduled gut punches and general meanness from yours truly. While I'm here, I'd like to thank the people who have reviewed recently, a good review always motivates me to work faster.

…..

Steven passed a thankfully dreamless sleep in the rest pod, even inadvertently catching Ginger in the middle of a crying fit couldn't keep him awake. He was concerned, sure, but all he could really afford to be worried about was that their pace was so slow it felt like time was running out for Pearl, wherever she was. Not to mention every 'cycle' he spent on Homeworld was approximately one day he spent away from his loved ones on Earth. They were probably frantic by now.

Murder Pearl wasn't there when he woke up, but Ginger was. She pushed a glass of that murky liquid towards him without a word and went back to what she was doing; scanning a screen full of long lines of data that looked pretty incomprehensible.

"Where's Orthoclase?" he asked, daring a sip of the liquid. It tasted kind of good this time.

"She is making arrangements to see a Jade in the west quarter," Ginger replied, eyes still on those rapidly scrolling lines. "The Jade's operations are invite only, she's trying to secure us a place for middle quadrant."

"Is it another pearl?" Steven asked, though he sort of knew the answer already.

"Yes. Jade has a pearl that sings publicly on a regular basis. It would improve the anchor to borrow her."

"Okay," Steven said, fidgeting. "Where's Murder Pearl?"

It was the first time he'd spoken the nickname out loud, and he watched Ginger carefully for a sign that she disapproved. Nothing.

"She released her form," Ginger replied. "She has a hairline fracture at the base of her gem, she releases when she's not on call."

That made a lot of sense, and it also made Steven feel really, really bad for Murder Pearl. He didn't doubt all those knocks she took in the arena made the fracture worse, and she'd also been saddled with a really awful nickname. She seemed like a good gem; she had saved Ginger, after all.

 _I could have used my healing spit to fix her fracture. I'll use it next time I see her._

That next time would be a while; Orthoclase burst through the door a moment later.

"I got two tickets," she announced. "They're not great seats but I can put you on a box if you want, pebble."

"What about Ginger?" Steven asked.

"She doesn't need a ticket. Pearls don't count."

…..

They passed a couple of hours with Orthoclase doing what she called a 'standard rejigging' on a pearl that seemed to be asleep. Steven was in the next room and Orthoclase had blocked off the operating table by a curtain, but from what he could see it looked pretty brutal. By the time she was finished the sleeping pearl was nearly a foot shorter and a completely different colour.

"I have to ask," Steven said quietly as they were preparing to leave. "It seems like we're going a bit...slow with gathering the pearls. Is there any way we can get them faster?"

"I hear you, pebble," Orthoclase told him, helping Ginger out of the culvert entrance and locking the door. "This thing is complex, more complex than even I thought. We need to get the important components together first, and we have almost all of them. After that, any pearl will do. Once we have this pearl, it'll speed us up."

That was such a relief to hear Steven felt faint.

"How complex is it?" he asked, genuinely curious now.

"Lapis' pearl made a diagram," Orthoclase said. "The anchor is important, and there's a radiating pattern that has to be matched. Anchor in the centre, three pearls forming the column, and six around them to fan it out. Then the rest of the pearls make it grow."

"Oh." He was already confused.

"Not only that, but they all have to be in a particular position, they all have to move at the same time and to the same beat, otherwise it all falls apart. Lapis' pearl seems to think we've got a good chance though."

"It will work," Ginger assured him. "We won't let her down."

Strange, even though she said it in that airy, vague way she had of speaking, something about Ginger's words held a steely determination.

They weren't heading for the bad area of town, which was why Orthoclase seemed happy to let Ginger walk with them. They hit two checkpoints on the way in and Ginger's jaw was once again cracked. No matter how many times he saw it, Steven couldn't get used to seeing it. It looked horrifically painful.

"When was the last time you cleaned that thing?" Orthoclase growled at the Topaz performing the check.

"It's iodine washed every cycle," the Topaz replied smoothly, not even looking at Orthoclase.

"Yeah right," Orthoclase snorted.

Their destination was a set of buildings stacked in, on and around each other so tightly that they had to pass through single file to get to the place they were going. They stopped at a tall building at the top of a long escalator; to Steven's eye it looked like a nightclub of some sort but did gems have clubbing on Homeworld?

On the inside, it was fancy. Red and gold interior, mirrored floors and ceilings, and full of gems in formal wear. He, Orthoclase and to a lesser extent Ginger looked very out of place. A glamorous-looking gem with orange skin and a flicker of flame-like red hair was singing on a small stage, cheered on by a number of drunken-looking tall gems.

"You should have taken the back entrance," a voice informed them snidely. They all looked down.

 _Aquamarine?_

It wasn't the one he'd met before, this one was just as tiny but her hair was pulled back in a tight bun and she looked merely irritated and not furious by their presence.

"Sorry," Orthoclase shrugged, clearly not sorry at all. "First time here and all. You wanna show us where to go?"

The aquamarine sighed heavily, turned sharply on her heel and beckoned for them to follow her.

"Have your tickets ready," she said. "You can leave your pearl in the holding pen..."

"I'd rather keep her with us, thanks."

"Of course you would," Aquamarine sighed again. "Any weapons or sharp objects?"

"No," Orthoclase answered, and Steven shook his head.

"You'll be going through the scanner, if you are found to be lying we'll be calling the authorities to report intoxication and general assault."

"We've got nothing on us," Orthoclase told her.

"Good. There is a general ban on manifesting weapons, if you manifest a weapon..."

"Intoxication and assault, we get it," Orthoclase grumbled.

There was a scanner like the one Steven had seen once at the airport in front of a large set of double doors. Several gems were already proceeding through it; they were a mix of clearly well-heeled gems along with a number of rougher types, including himself and Orthoclase.

"The nanobytes won't set off the scanner, will they?" Steven whispered to Ginger.

"Not while I'm within ten pelmetres of you," she whispered back.

Sure enough, they got through the scanner with no problems and were filtered into some seats in a coliseum-type arrangement. The seats were shabby, foam-covered and covered in little holes but even the clearly rich gems didn't seem to care. As the seats filled, two young-looking short gems handed out objects from a black box.

 _Are those...knives?_

When the box was brought around to them (Orthoclase took three, offered one to Ginger, who refused) he got a closer look and they were, in fact, knives. Specifically, they looked like the kind of knives he'd seen ninjas use in movies before. Small, thick, balanced. A red-coloured band was wrapped around the hilt. He held the one given to him by Orthoclase gingerly. What kind of show was this?

The lights dimmed, and into the centre of the room walked a pale green gem dressed in flowing robes. She smiled and waved at the cheering audience, then called for silence.

"Do we have any new-hatches in the audience?"

A number of gems hooted and waved their arms.

"My reputation precedes me," the green gem laughed. "Well, I'll keep it simple so we can get on with the show. You're holding a tenner blade in your hands. When you see the colour on the band pop up on the screen, you throw it into the ring. Simple, right?"

The audience laughed indulgently.

"But that's not much fun on its own," the green gem continued. "We need something to aim at. Come on out!"

A crawling feeling had been building in Steven's stomach since being handed the blade, he knew it would be something like this. Sure enough, a pearl stepped lightly into the ring. Draped in some sort of silky trailing fabric, her hair elaborately pinned up...

 _Her eyes are closed. Why are her eyes closed?_

…shimmer dust coating her exposed arms, legs and face, right down to the furrows under her closed eyes.

"Throw from anywhere in the audience, pearl here will hear it and dodge. As you can see, she lacks eyes to see what's coming, but there's nothing wrong with her hearing. It's has been specially tailored to allow for super-sensitive hearing...but we can't make it too easy on her, can we?"

The audience roared that no, they couldn't.

The curtain fell on an enormous drum overlooking the arena. A large hulking gem that Steven couldn't identify stood with a gong, ready to strike. The Jade took her bow and scurried away to cheering, and the pearl took her position in the centre.

"Did you remodel her?" Steven whispered to Orthoclase.

Orthoclase snorted, annoyed.

"Not me," she hissed. "That's Spinel's work. If I'd done it, I wouldn't have left those marks under her eyes."

"Is she really blind?" Steven asked.

"Of course. Standard eye removal, one of the easiest jobs there is," Orthoclase answered. "'Course, when I do it I usually replace the eyes instead of just leaving them out..."

"Ssh!" a gem from behind them hissed, and although she made what was probably a rude gesture Orthoclase went silent.

The overhead screen went blue, and the burly gem hammered the drum. A flurry of sharp metal objects flew into the arena, but the pearl spun, dipped and cartwheeled until the last one hit the ground. None had hit her.

The screen turned purple, and another flurry descended on the arena. The blind pearl somersaulted gracefully out of the path of most of them, sank to the floor on her knees to avoid the others, and leaped over one that had been kept back and thrown at the last minute. She landed neatly on the hilt of one of the previously thrown blades, stood there on tiptoe with one leg stretched out behind her. She gave the audience the tiniest of smiles as they roared their approval.

When the red screen came up, Steven couldn't bear to throw his blade so he just dropped it over the side. The pearl dodged these blades as easily as the others, rolling out of their path and nimbly side-stepping the ones stuck into the floor. She finished each throw with a beautifully-cut balletic pose and a raucous applause from the watching gems.

A little _too_ raucous, at least for one gem.

Steven's attention had been turned to Ginger, when he noticed she wasn't watching the blind pearl perform but watching another gem in the audience. He turned to look at this gem himself.

It was a dark green gem, not particularly big but intimidating all the same. She seemed drunk, or whatever the gem equivalent was. The pale blue gem beside her looked mortified to be in her company.

Out of the corner of his eye, Steven saw Ginger's fingers go to her mouth. Her lips moved, but he couldn't hear any sound come out of them. Her fingers flickered, as though she was breathing something into them. With one audible exhale, she dropped her hands and looked to the blind pearl.

The blind pearl's head tilted slightly. The drumming hadn't started, the screen was waiting for a new colour to be picked, but her body seemed poised to move...

There was a rush of wind as a blade, far too large to be one of the handed-out blades, rocketed right towards the blind pearl. It should have been moving too fast for her to dodge it...

...and yet she did, throwing herself backwards into the air just above where the blade should have skewered her. It missed her by a hair, just catching her cheek and slicing a long cut there. The blade clattered to the arena floor and the blind pearl landed just behind it. A green bloodlike substance trickled from her face to soak her robes.

"You!" the Jade screamed as she suddenly reappeared, pointing at the intoxicated gem. "You've been warned, for Core's sake! Who let you in here?"

"I'm sorry, Jade," the pale blue gem moaned. "She promised me she'd be on her best behavior!"

"This performance is canceled," Jade hissed. "Everyone out before the Amethyst squad gets here!"

The gems moaned and bitched, but they left. The two young gems collected the blades and Jade ushered the pearl out of the arena, oblivious to Orthoclase, Steven and Ginger following them.

"That was quite a show," Orthoclase drawled, catching Jade as she dabbed at the blind pearl's face muttering darkly to herself.

"Oh...this is all I need," she groaned. "What in Core's name do you want?"

"Relax, I can help you," Orthoclase told her. "I need to borrow your pearl for a while."

"Borrow?" Jade snorted. "What for?"

"Top secret," Orthoclase shrugged. "I need her voice. You'll get her back in one piece...actually, you'll get her back in better condition. I can fix that cut...and I'll even get rid of those marks under her eyes, and all for free."

Jade looked from Orthoclase to the blind pearl, and touched the blind pearl's facial markings gingerly with her thumb.

"I suppose," she groaned. "Show's canceled for a while anyway. I got your word on this?"

"On my honour as a remodeler."

Jade snorted derisively, but she handed over the blind pearl in the end.

…..

They dropped Steven off at the workshop, but Orthoclase and Ginger went off somewhere together because apparently fixing the blind pearl was going to take some special equipment. He was a little taken aback to find Murder Pearl sitting on the couch, not really doing anything besides staring into space.

"Uh, hi," he said awkwardly.

"Hello," she replied, unblinking and utterly still.

"I'm...I'm actually glad you're here," he continued. "I wanted to thank you for what you did for Ginger...and for me, I guess. I would've been in big trouble if they found me, right? But mostly for Ginger."

"I did what I was supposed to," Murder Pearl said in that same airy, vague way Ginger had of speaking.

"I guess, but I still owe you. So I was thinking...Ginger said you had a fracture in your gem somewhere?"

She stared at him, not nodding or shaking her head. Just staring.

"I've got healing powers. Like, I have healing spit, and I already used it to fix some pearls...I can fix you, if you want?"

It seemed like the air suddenly turned thick, heavy. Murder Pearl didn't say a word.

"So, do you want to be fixed?" he asked, wishing she would say something.

"Do you want to fix me?" she asked instead.

"Well, sure I do!" he answered. "You deserve it!"

"Then I will accept."

Relieved, and thinking that once she was fixed he stood a better chance of having an actual conversation with her, Steven licked his hand and pressed it over her gem. He didn't know what to expect. Maybe a smile, maybe even some tears...

Nothing.

No, there _was_ something. Her face didn't change but something about the way she held herself was different.

"Thank you," she said to him. "I will be back soon."

Before he could ask what that meant, she had taken the hook she'd used to attack that Amethyst back at the old workshop and scaled the wall with uncanny ease. She pulled the grate off of the upper vent and disappeared into it.

 _Oh no._

The next hour or however long it took was unbearably tense. He'd messed up badly, and he didn't even know why. When somebody did come back, it was Ginger and she noticed straight away that something was wrong.

"Where is Murder Pearl?" she asked, still airy and vague but with a note of tension undercutting it.

"I'm sorry," Steven said through gritted teeth, trying hard not to cry. "I just wanted to thank her for saving us, so I healed her...then she said she'd be back and she went out the vent!"

He didn't think it was possible for a pearl to go paler than they already were. Ginger proved him wrong.

"That was a mistake," she told him, not scolding but matter-of-fact, which only made him feel worse.

"What's going to happen?" he asked, dreading the answer.

"Normally, a pearl's spike keeps her under control," Ginger explained, as she pulled out a tablet and started furiously typing. "Murder Pearl's is no longer effective, but her damaged gem kept her from attacking other gems outside of the arena. She has nothing to hold her back now."

That sounded really bad, even when said in Ginger's soft smooth tone. It sounded disastrous.

"I've messaged Orthoclase to tell her to stay away from the workshop," Ginger continued. "We should wait until Murder Pearl returns. When she does, stay behind me and don't move. Understand?"

Gulping, Steven nodded.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Nine**

Note: Multiple weddings, work issues and health issues mean the next updates may not be for a while, but hopefully I'll get back to normal by the end of July. This is just a heads up.

Also, this might be peak pretentious git, but I made an 8tracks playlist of music I listen to when writing Chorus. There will probably be more than one, I have a lot of musical inspiration. It can be found here: /ptlikestea/chorus-inspiration-tracks

…..

Time on Homeworld had more or less ceased to mean anything to Steven, so he had no idea how long he and Ginger sat in silence, waiting with dread for Murder Pearl to return.

 _On a scale of one to ten, how angry is Ginger with me?_

 _Probably, like, thirteen._

Usually when someone was angry with Steven, they went quiet on him, but Ginger was already quiet so it was hard to tell. She didn't _look_ angry, but if he had learned anything from his time on Homeworld, it was that what Pearls looked like and how they felt were two very different things.

Eventually, the boredom mixed with the fear prompted him to ask her.

"Ginger?"

"Yes?"

She didn't even turn to look at him. Her eyes were rooted on the vent above them.

"Are you really angry with me?"

Her answer could mean he'd have to apologize a lot more and they'd move on, or it could mean getting tossed out of the workshop to fend for himself, leaving Pearl's fate unknown. He gulped.

"No, of course not."

 _That_ surprised him. Considering how badly he'd messed up, he'd thought she would be at least a little angry still.

"Really?"

Now she did turn towards him.

"Orthoclase should not have left you here unsupervised," Ginger told him. "From what I understand, you lack knowledge of pearls and how they work. You could not have known that her spike was no longer functioning and that fixing her would make her uncontrollable."

"No, I didn't," he admitted. "I'm really sorry."

"We knew she was dangerous. Taking her from her owner was a gamble," Ginger continued. "But it will be all right. I promise I won't let her hurt you."

That was heartening to hear, but it brought Steven to tears because the resemblance to Pearl was never so strong as in that moment, when she promised to protect him. He swallowed, scrubbed his face against his arm. He couldn't afford to cry now; he had more questions.

"What is this spike thing you were talking about?" he asked. "Why is Murder Pearl's one not working?"

"It's working, it just doesn't affect her like it would another pearl," Ginger explained. "The spike is implanted into our gems when we are made. It generates a shock when we start thinking too much."

Steven thought he couldn't possibly have heard her right. A shock?

"Like...an electric shock?" he asked, tentatively.

"Yes," she answered. "It's a magnetic pulse shock, but it's much the same."

That couldn't be right. Homeword was an awful place, he had no doubt about that, but it couldn't be _that_ bad. Even if he had just witnessed a whole lot of gems throwing blades at a pearl that had been deliberately blinded, and even though he had days before seen his 'friend' Orthoclase give away six living pearls like a kid giving away snacks at lunchtime, and he knew that pearls were so isolated they had to develop their own sign language just to speak to one another, but _this_...

"Why?" Even asking, pushing the word past the lump in his throat, was difficult.

"If we think too much, we can refuse orders we find distasteful," Ginger replied, so distant and cool she might have been talking about the weather. "It keeps us obedient."

With mounting horror, Steven realized that if Ginger was using the word _we,_ that definitively meant _all_ pearls got this treatment. Including Pearl.

"Does our Pearl have one of those?" he asked, dreading the answer.

"The Renegade Pearl's spike was removed early on in an experimental procedure," Ginger told him. "Though it was said that a small broken piece remained inside her gem. Not enough to give regular shocks, just the occasional one."

A lifetime of memories flooded Steven's mind. Pearl was known to act erratically, overemotional. It was a quirk they all just shrugged their shoulders at. Knowing she had possibly been experiencing electric shocks suddenly made sense of her entire personality.

Steven just about managed to clap a hand in front of his mouth before he vomited.

… _.._

Ginger forced him to ingest some more of that liquid after she cleaned him up, then told him to go to the rest pod for a while. He gladly complied.

But he regretted it once he got stuck in another dream, and it was clear things were getting much worse. The high ceiling of the dome was splintering like a cracked eggshell, and what could be seen outside of it was black and red like congealed blood, pulsing with obscene life. The little blue cubes were stacked high but the black was spreading over them too, in long ropey veins.

The floor of the dome had cracked too, and as he looked into the chasm below it he could just about hear something. It sounded like singing, high and breathy and in no language he could indentify. It almost sounded like a prayer.

Pearl was nowhere to be seen.

…..

He woke because he heard a noise in the vent above the pod, a noise like the scurrying of squirrels or mice. He hurried out of the pod as fast as he could manage, nearly sick with fear. Ginger grabbed him as he was running into the main workshop, just before Murder Pearl neatly hopped out of the vent to land in front of them.

She didn't look any worse for wear, except for a ragged tear in the shoulder of her dress and a smudge of some dark liquid on her neck. The hook she had brought with her, however, was bent so far out of shape it was nearly straight.

Ginger's fingers fluttered, but Murder Pearl laughed.

"We may speak freely now," she said with an angelic smile. "There is no-one to stop us."

"What did you do?" Ginger asked, backing up a little to put herself more firmly in front of Steven.

"I did what was needed," Murder Pearl answered. "I saw my enemies. They are no more."

"You are a pearl," Ginger reminded her. "You do not have enemies."

"The ones that toy with my life are my enemies. I have been given the means to destroy them, and so I shall."

"You compromise us. All of us. If you are running loose we will not be able to find the Renegade, and you will bring scrutiny on our sisters."

"I do not intend to run loose," Murder Pearl said. She sounded almost...hurt?

"Orthoclase is one who toys with your life," Ginger told her.

"And your life, and the life of many others."

"If she does not, our sisters will be at the mercy of the others. I have accepted this."

"You have not," Murder Pearl laughed. "It pains you. I have seen how it pains you."

For a fleeting moment, Ginger's face crumpled in on itself in a mask of despair, and a moment later it was gone again.

"I would release you from your pain," Murder Pearl said, gently stroking her battered hook. "And I will take the others. They will not hurt our sisters again."

"You would get us all processed," Ginger said sternly. "And you would see all our memories lost in the dust. You are not thinking. Kill your tormentors, if you must. I will not stop you. But you will not put us in danger."

"How can you stop me, sister?" Murder Pearl asked. She took a step forward, and Steven's heart leapt into his throat, but Ginger stood firm.

"I cannot," she answered. "But I will give my memory to others, and no pearl on Homeworld will speak with you again. You will be alone."

The way Murder Pearl reacted, it was like Ginger had threated to destroy her family. In a way, maybe she had. Murder Pearl's grip on the hook visibly tightended so the twisted metal groaned. Calm as ever, Ginger stepped away from Steven and put herself directly in front of Murder Pearl. She took the hand holding the hook and placed the sharpened tip at the centre of her own gem.

"Kill me," she said. "If you can."

Murder Pearl had only really shown two faces; eerie calm and murderous glee. But to Steven's astonishment, her face when Ginger asked her to kill her was distraught, almost childlike in its misery.

"I could not," she said, as fat tears began coursing down her face. "How could you think that I would?"

She tossed the hook aside and covered her face with her hands. Ginger wrapped her arms around her trembling shoulders.

"This foolishness ends here," Steven just about heard Ginger whisper. "We need your memories more than we need your violence."

…..

Eventually, Orthoclase returned with a _'What in Core's name happened?'_ that made Steven wince and a serious whispered conversation with Ginger in the alcove. Murder Pearl had retreated to her gem form and Ginger had placed her safely in a tin box, after assuring Steven she was no longer a threat.

It was through Orthoclase that they learned that forty-six Jaspers had been murdered in a barracks not far from their workshop. The investigators were baffled, and Homeworld was on a curfew until more information was found.

"The black market's going to be down for a while," Orthoclase explained wearily, ushering him into her operating room. "Pretty much the entire Homeworld underground is going to lay low. Best case scenario is they think it's rival Jaspers in a turf war."

The image of those black veiny ropes covering the inside of wherever Pearl was flickered through Steven's mind.

"We need to hurry," he said desperately. "We're running out of time."

"I know, I know," Orthoclase assured him. "We're moving ahead with phase two, I still have a favour or two to call in."

"What is phase two?" Steven asked.

"We need to get a whole lot of pearls all at once to make up the rest of the chorus, and besides the shops and the baths where they get made, there's only one place to find a whole lot of pearls," she explained. "We're going to hijack a processing plant."

"Oh. What's a processing plant?"

"It's where old unwanted pearls go to be processed."

It still didn't really explain what it was, but Steven had a sneaking suspicion he was better off not knowing.

"Where's Ginger?" he asked instead.

"She's had a rough cycle, I told her to get some rest. So I need you to help me fix up this pearl," Orthoclase said.

She turned on a machine and the gem on the table formed the body of the blind pearl. Even though Steven knew her eyelids were closed because she had no eyes, she still looked like she was sleeping.

"You ever think about going into remodelling, pebble?" Orthoclase asked conversationally.

"No," Steven answered bluntly.

"That's a shame. Even without your healing spit I think you'd be good at it."

Steven said nothing, but licked his palm and was about to bring it down on the blind pearl's navel-set gem, but Orthoclase caught his wrist before he could.

"Don't," she said sternly, handing him a wet wipe-thing to wash his hand. "If you heal her, her eyes will grow back and we'll have to remove them again. It's just a touch up, it won't take long."

Swallowing, Steven wiped his hand and stepped back. Orthoclase took out a vial of some shifting, silt-like material and what looked like a paintbrush and needle combined. She handed him the paintbrush-needle and poured the silt into a flat tray.

"Why do you think I'd be good at remodeling?" Steven asked.

"You seem to care a lot about pearls, even the ones that don't belong to you," Orthoclase answered with a shrug. "Homeworld could use more remodelers that care about what they do. I mean, look at the mess Spinel made of a routine eye removal!"

"I don't think I could," Steven said. "Doesn't it hurt them when you do these things?"

"It used to, but these cycles I usually disable their pain receptors so they don't feel a thing."

Steven wanted to ask about the spike, but he was afraid of the answer. He'd already vomited once, and Ginger had only said a few words. He knew Orthoclase would be brutally honest, and that scared him even more.

"Just ask, pebble."

"What?"

Orthoclase was brushing the silt along the wound the blind pearl had gotten from the thrown sword, her eyes seemingly rooted to the pearl's face. All the same, Steven felt like she was watching him.

"You have that look on your face like you want to ask me something. So ask it."

Swallowing, he asked.

"Ginger said the pearls have a spike in their gems to keep them obedient," he asked. "Is that true?"

"Of course," Orthoclase answered flippantly. "You think any normal gem would do the things pearls have to do if there wasn't something compelling them to? This one jumps over knives cycle in, cycle out. If the spike wasn't there, who knows what she'd be doing."

"Why pearls? Why do none of the other gems have to have spikes?"

"Pearls are created differently," Orthoclase explained. "Gems come from the earth. Pearls are made in water grain by grain. It's easy to put the spike in while they're being made."

"Can it be taken out? Ginger said our Pearl had hers removed..."

"It's a difficult procedure, but it can be done. Of course, once it's out you usually get the few cycles of crying and screaming to put up with until they get used to it..."

Steven couldn't ask anymore. If he knew anymore, he'd be sick again.

"I removed Ginger's early on," Orthoclase continued. "She cried for three solid cycles, and I still have no idea why because she won't tell me. I suppose that's why you'd make such a good remodeler, pebble. She talks a lot more when you're around."

Steven barely heard her. He was stuck in a loop of thought, circling in his head.

 _I need to get Pearl out of here. I need to get pearls out of here._


	10. Chapter 10

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Ten**

Note: Managed to find some time to pop this chapter out in between the chaos that makes up my summer months. A reminder: this fic has an 8-tracks playlist under the title _Chorus-Inspiration Tracks._ I know has been doing a sort of website blocking thing lately so I can't post links, but it's there if you feel like having a soundtrack to your reading.

…..

The blind pearl regenerated quickly after her surgery, and sure enough there was no trace of the cut on her face or the furrows under her eyes. Steven felt it would be rude not to at least try to talk to her, but as much as he didn't want to ask about her blinding it was the only thing he could think of to say.

"Did it hurt?" he asked, knowing he probably wouldn't like the answer.

"Yes," she replied in that smooth emotionless way most Homeworld pearls seemed to have.

"I'm sorry," he blurted out.

"Why? You didn't order it," she asked, tilting her head owlishly.

"I know, I'm just...sorry that they did that to you."

"It could have been worse," she said with a shrug.

 _That_ was a conversation he didn't want to have. He sat with her in awkward silence until a knock at the door brought Orthoclase out of the operating room. She swung open the door and ushered in a Jasper-no, the Jasper that had brought the pearl in for surgery before.

"Took a while to find you," the Jasper grumbled.

"What can I say, we live in interesting times," Orthoclase said. "Did you talk to Spinel for me?"

"Yeah, but you'll have to go see her yourself," the Jasper answered. "She won't just break the law on anyone's say-so, especially right now."

"Fine," Orthoclase groaned. "And you?"

"I'm staying out of this. Whatever you're up to, I really don't want any part in it..."

"Then why are you here?"

The Jasper sighed, clenched her fists, and then reached into her pocket and dug out her pearl.

"She wants to be involved," she said, holding the pearl as carefully as an egg.

"Hm? She said this?"

"Not really, no," the Jasper replied. "She made sure I knew though..."

"We need _voices_ for this. If she can't speak, she can't sing."

"I'm pretty sure she knows that. I wouldn't have brought her here otherwise..."

The gem glowed, and the pearl manifested. Steven only got to see her for a split second, because in an instant she had moved behind Jasper, and all he could see were the tips of her yellow curls and her fingers curled around Jasper's arm. She whispered something, and Jasper crouched to hear.

"She says she should be able to sing, as long as there's other pearls around."

"Then we will be glad to have her," Ginger announced, emerging from the alcove where she had been working.

Her presence seemed to make the other pearl just a little braver, and she stepped out just far enough from Jasper to be able to use their finger-talk. On the couch, the blind pearl's fingers fluttered too, but she also mumbled something under her breath.

 _How does sign language work if you can't see it?_

"Her voice is less important than her presence," Ginger informed them. "As long as she can use gesture-speak, she can add to the chorus."

"Well, she can definitely do that," Jasper responded. "But just how risky is this? I mean, I didn't get her out of the barracks just to stick her in more danger..."

"She'll be one of fifty pearls or so," Orthoclase said. "And we have some excellent muscle providing back-up, it's practically risk-free!"

Jasper looked very doubtful, but judging by the way the pearl was pulling on her arm her resolve could only last so long.

"Okay, fine," she said at last. "Just give me a place to be and I'll bring her there."

"I'll be in touch," Orthoclase nodded, ushering them to the door.

"Don't leave it too late, all Jaspers are on lockdown until they figure out what happened in that barracks."

"I won't," Orthoclase laughed uneasily.

Once she closed over the door, she turned on her heel to Steven and Ginger to give them the plan.

"We need to go see Spinel, and with any luck we'll be in a processing plant before the curfew hits. Ginger, prep the nanobytes. Pebble, wipe that guilty look off your face."

…..

Orthoclase only managed to get the first few words of the plan out before Spinel started laughing. It was mean laughter, devoid of genuine mirth and more a poke at a detested competitor.

 _This is the Spinel that messed up the blind pearl's face._

"Exactly how stupid do you think I am, Orthoclase?" Spinel sighed, wiping away a tear. "I mean, a dozen or so, who hasn't dipped their toes in that...but _forty? Right now?"_

"We could make do with thirty-nine," Orthoclase shrugged. "And right now is perfect, the slag won't be looking at us."

"Or they'll be looking extra hard at us," Spinel growled. "Forty-six Jaspers, in one quadrant. Gems are out there thinking we have a zoatox infestation..."

That was the second time Steven had heard the word _zoatox_ mentioned. His curiosity was pricked, but he kept his silence.

"Only half-baked gems think it's zoatoxes," Orthoclase responded.

"Maybe, but a processing plant full of pearls goes missing a few cycles after a barracks full of Jaspers gets shredded? I know _some of us_ didn't see actual combat but you _know_ they never went for pearls like they did every other gem..."

"Spare me, they won't even notice. In order for a gem to actually spread a zoatox infestation by using pearls as incubators they'd have to get right up close to a breeding specimen, and both you and I and any right-thinking gem knows that's impossible."

"Key words being _right-thinking._ What in Core's name do you want forty pearls for, anyway?"

Orthoclase thought for a moment, but that moment was all it took for Spinel to immediately know it was a lie.

"I need more filler and my usual supplier is laying low," she replied, to a derisive laugh from Spinel.

"If you're not going to be honest, why should I help you?"

"Maybe there's something in it for you," Orthoclase said. "I only need these pearls temporarily. A gem could make some money on the black market..."

Steven gulped. That awful crawly feeling washed over him again.

"How exactly would a gem make money on a load of broken pearls?" Spinel drawled.

"They wouldn't be broken. I'd fix 'em up good as new, and for free," Orthoclase offered. "What you do with them afterwards is up to you."

Spinel hummed, tapped her fingers on her desk, but Steven could see by the greedy glint in her eye that her mind had been made up.

"Deal," she said. "I'll get some of my gems to distract security. You'll have about half a quadrant."

"That's all we need," Orthoclase said with a smile.

…..

"You disapprove, pebble," Orthoclase sighed as they walked to the processing plant. "Don't deny it, I can see it even through the nanobytes."

The streets were almost empty, and Orthoclase felt secure enough to let Ginger walk with them. Even the checkpoints were empty.

"Yeah, kinda," Steven said quietly.

"Look, if they're in the processing plant they're at the end of the line," she told him. "At least this way they get a reprieve, sort of."

"Yeah, but...isn't the black market a bad place?" he asked.

"Depends on your definition of bad," Orthoclase shrugged.

"What do you think, Ginger?"

Ginger blinked. Clearly she was unused to being asked such an open-ended question.

"Answer the pebble," Orthoclase drawled. "What do pearls think of the black market?"

"It's a bit worse than normal shops," she said uncertainly. "But you can't tell, some pearls sold legally have ended up in terrible homes, and some pearls on the black market have gone to better owners than they had before. It's impossible to predict."

If that was meant to make Steven feel better, it failed.

 _They won't go to the black market. I can take them with me when I leave. I don't even have to tell Orthoclase. Ginger will probably help me. She doesn't like this any more than I do._

When they reached the building they were looking for, Ginger scanned the alleyways and doors for signs of security.

"There was a scuffle," she said. "There was only one Amethyst on duty, she's in gem form somewhere now."

"With any luck, they dropped her somewhere across town," Orthoclase said, kicking open the door.

After using some sort of rod to disable any recording equipment in the plant, Orthoclase gave Steven a long sharp prod of some sort and a small metallic bag.

"We need to be quick," she told him. "So all you need to do is poke them somewhere, they'll release their form and you pop 'em into the bag. No making conversation, no trying to heal them, just poke 'n' grab. Got it?"

Swallowing, Steven nodded.

When he was lead into the main factory floor, he thought his knees would buckle under him. Rows and rows of pearls sat on purpose-built shelves beside a machine that looked near-identical to the hydraulic press he'd seen once when his Dad took a factory job for a while, except that it was rectangular instead of round. And just about big enough to fit a pearl between the steel plates.

The worst part was that nobody was stopping the pearls from getting up and leaving, but they hadn't. They were sitting on those shelves placidly waiting for their doom.

He would have been sick, if there was anything in his stomach to bring up, but somehow he'd known this was what it would be like and didn't drink any of Ginger's liquid nutrition thing before they left.

 _Ginger...however bad this is for me, it must be worse for her._

But when he looked at her, she didn't seem upset or angry or anything other than utterly, as always, calm. Her fingers were fluttering, and a few of the shelved pearls were talking back and faintly smiling.

"Get to work, pebble," Orthoclase muttered to him before she sauntered off to the far end of the factory floor.

The first pearl he approached had long straight hair and was dressed in some sort of heavy embroidered robe, she looked immaculate. Her eyes followed him as he walked up to her shelf, nervously clutching the prod.

"Uh, hi," he said, even though he was very aware he had been told not to make conversation.

"Hello," she replied.

"So, I guess I'm going to be stealing you? I kind of have to poke you with this and then put you in a bag..."

"I understand," she said airily.

"But, I don't want to hurt you or anything, so if I do I'm sorry."

"That's all right."

When he plucked up the nerve to poke her in the side, the little 'ow' she released before retreating to gem form seemed to be mostly for his benefit. He placed her carefully in the bag and moved on to the next shelf, to a pearl that looked considerably more battered.

"Hi, I'm going to poke you and put you in a bag because we're robbing this place and..."

"She can't talk," the pearl in the next shelf over piped up. "But she says it's okay."

Swallowing hard, he collected the battered one and the helpful one from the next shelf. He asked for permission every time, and none of them seemed to object to being stabbed and stuffed in a bag. They all took it with a sort of vaguely baffled good humour.

He had gathered fourteen pearls before he encountered a problem. The fifteenth pearl didn't say anything when he tried to talk to her, and she didn't react at all when he used the prod. He was still trying to poke her harder without actually hurting her when Orthoclase turned the corner and saw him.

"We have pretty much all of them, you can stop," she told him.

"This one's not releasing her form," he said, pressing a little harder with the prod. "I don't want to just leave her here, what if..."

Orthoclase leaned in, checked the pearl's eyes and inspected her gem.

"That's because she's dead," she said. "See how her gem is splintered? She probably died on the way here."

Between the vacant stare from the dead pearl's eyes and the casual way Orthoclase talked about her, a cold horror washed over Steven. He thought by now he had seen the worst of Homeworld, but he had only scratched the surface.

"We have over fifty living pearls now, pebble. Be thankful for that, for Core's sake."

Orthoclase dragged him away, leaving just the one pearl sitting on a shelf waiting to be processed. But just as they were going for the door, another pearl emerged from the small room just off of the factory floor.

"You belong to the owner of this place, right?" Orthoclase asked her.

"That is correct," the pearl answered.

"Well, that means I have to steal you too. Can't afford to let you tell on us..."

"I am happy to go with you. I wish to help with the chorus."

Orthoclase gaped, and then turned to Ginger with a frown.

"Exactly how far has this spread among pearls?" she growled.

"It's hard to say," Ginger answered.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Eleven**

Note: I haven't had a break since the beginning of spring between my health issues, work and everyone deciding to get married every single weekend of this summer, I am beyond running on fumes and at this stage I think I am only kept upright by sheer force of will. Pray for me, please.

…..

"Hey, do you know these two offcuts?" Orthoclase asked lazily, tossing a tablet-type screen at him.

Steven froze. Garnet and Amethyst, caught by the pause button in a moment of intense worry, in what was clearly Lars' ship. They looked awful, dark bags under their eyes and posture crooked with exhaustion. It felt like it had been years since he saw them.

"Yes," he said, swallowing thickly.

"I got an encrypted message from that ship, they're looking for you."

He had been in the rest pod, taking a fitful but dreamless nap.

"Did you tell them I'm here?" he asked.

"I didn't confirm," Orthoclase shrugged. "I told them I knew where you were and that you weren't in any danger, but I didn't give them our location."

"They're probably worried sick," Steven said sheepishly. "I mean, they were already worried about Pearl going missing, and then _I_ went missing..."

"You want to bring them here?" she asked.

"Huh? Are you okay with that?"

"Sure, why not?" she shrugged again. "You're trustworthy and you trust them, I'm cool with it. I'll send them a location and pick them up. But while I'm doing that, you need to get the pearls to that Lapis across town."

"Okay," he agreed. Knowing he was going to see Amethyst and Garnet soon nearly made him weep with relief. Although... "Um,...I don't really know how to get across town by myself..."

"Ginger will go with you," Orthoclase offered. "She's got all the pearls in her subspace so don't attract attention."

"But...what about the checkpoints?" Steven asked.

"Let them crack her as usual, they won't find anything unless you give them a reason to probe her gem. So, like I said, don't attract attention."

…..

"When was the last time you got this pearl serviced?" the Topaz at the checkpoint asked in the most bored tone Steven had ever heard.

"Um, like...half an orbit?" he stammered, trying to remember Homeworld's odd phrasing.

"Get it done ASAP. I'll let you off with a warning this time," the Topaz scolded, pulling the forceps out of Ginger's mouth.

"Sure, sure I will," Steven said, walking backwards. "Thanks, I will."

Once they were safely away from the checkpoint, Steven breathed a sigh of relief. They'd been through three of them, and each one managed to miss that Ginger was carrying a case of stolen pearls inside her.

"Does it hurt when they do that?" he asked Ginger.

"Yes," she replied in that same blunt manner she always did.

In a way, her honesty was refreshing, even though it often shocked and scared him. Almost everyone in Steven's life tried to sugarcoat things for him, but Ginger didn't seem able. Or maybe she just didn't want to.

"Orthoclase told me they have to do it because you won't open your mouth under orders. Wouldn't it be easier if you did?"

He waited for Ginger to tell him he was prying, or just refuse to answer. He knew she could; she kept things from Orthoclase all the time. Instead, she was as brutally honest as he had come to expect from her.

"Most gems are able to repair their damaged gems with mineral grafts, it's a non-invasive procedure," she explained, lowering her voice to a whisper as they passed a handful of gems loitering at a corner. "Pearls cannot do this, so when our gems are damaged we need to absorb filler from the inside out. They use a tube to do this. It's very unpleasant."

Steven had a feeling 'unpleasant' was an understatement.

"Sometimes back home sick people have to get tubes put in to help them breathe or eat when they're too sick to do it on their own," he said. "It looks pretty bad, but it's for the best..."

"The tube is not the issue," Ginger cut in. "The filler is taken from processed pearls. It is an intrusion and our mass rejects it automatically. If we had a choice, we would not choose to be repaired at all."

Steven wasn't quite sure he fully understood what she was saying, but it brought up that awful squirmy feeling, like he was going to be sick.

 _Serves me right for being so nosy,_ he thought bitterly.

The sprawling estate where the Dowager Lapis lived was just a few blocks away, and he gladly focused on that instead of the conversation he had just had. He could hear faint singing from inside as he knocked on the door.

The Lapis' pearl ushered them inside quietly, guiding them into a large room with a small stage. The Jaspers' pearl was the one singing, some upbeat tune with a matching quickstep dance, her long curly twintails bouncing around her face with each movement. The dowager Lapis watched her from a couch, a long glass tube of some smoky substance dangled elegantly from her hand. Her face was unimpressed, one eyebrow scornfully raised.

When the pearl finished and took a deep curtsy, the dowager rolled her eyes.

"It's trite, but I suppose the brutes down at the barracks enjoy this kind of nonsense?" she snorted.

"Yes, they do," the pearl replied softly.

"It's passable, if they won't let you sing anything more dignified it'll have to do." she scoffed. "But you're too quiet still. All of you are too quiet."

With a start, Steven realized that the Disney pearls were in the room as well, lingering to the side of the stage.

"You need to _project,"_ the dowager instructed. "I know you're all used to singing under your breath, but you need to put more power into it. Push from your stomach as well as your chest."

The pearls all nodded in unison. Lapis' pearl ushered Steven and Ginger in a little closer.

"Orthoclase's pearl and quartz are here," she said.

"Hm? Oh, very good," the Lapis sighed. "I suppose you've brought the rest of them?"

"Yeah, we ended up with forty two!" Steven enthused.

"Wonderful," the Lapis replied. It was hard to tell if she was being sarcastic, her general way of speaking seemed to drip with disdain it masked any sincerity.

Ginger removed the sack of pearls from her subspace and placed it on the low table. Slightly, almost imperceptibly, the Disney pearls and the barracks pearl leaned forward to see them.

"It doesn't matter how many we get if they can't learn to sing with some actual force," Dowager Lapis sniffed. "It won't even be worth hearing."

"But...your one sings sometimes, doesn't she?" Steven asked.

Lapis' pearl (the one he had started thinking of as _Alice,_ just in his own mind) dropped her gaze to the ground as her owner turned to look at her.

"Only when she thinks I can't hear her," Lapis said. "She has a delightful voice, but it's weak. I do not intend to risk my standing and properties if they can't sing above a whisper."

It was pure hyperbole, the pearls did sing notably quieter than the average karaoke bar customer but they were hardly whispering. But Lapis was such a purist she would accept nothing less than proper volume. Panic bubbled up in Steven's throat, and Orthoclase wasn't around to offer any solutions. He would have to think of something...

"What if I work with them for a while?" he blurted out. "I mean, I sing in a band sometimes and sometimes I get told to _quit that damn racket_ so it must be pretty loud..."

"Do what you want," Lapis said dismissively, rising to her feet. "I'm going to my rest pod. I've had quite enough of tutoring for one cycle."

She swept out of the room in the most grandiose manner, leaving an awkward silence in her wake. The pearls stared at Steven, clearly waiting to be told what to do.

"Okay," he sighed, cracking his knuckles. "Um, Alice?"

Lapis' pearl didn't respond.

"Oh, right," he muttered. "That's you! You're Alice...I mean, that's what I'm calling you so I don't get you mixed up with the other pearls...is that okay with you?"

Slightly baffled-looking, she nodded.

"Good. So I need you to find a thing...like, back home I play a ukulele and I forgot to bring it with me and I don't know if Homeworld has something like that, but it's like _this big_ and it has four strings and it's pretty easy to play...can you find something like that?"

"It sounds like a dulcemeter," she replied. "My owner has one in storage."

"Okay, great! Can I use it?" he asked, and she nodded.

As she left to find the instrument, Steven set up an assembly line on the table of pearls to press his licked palm to. A lot of them were in terrible condition, cracked and crumbling and covered in deep gouges. Each one was made smooth and whole in turn and reformed about a minute later. Soon the room was crowded with pearls, mildly confused and examining their no-longer-faulty masses. Fingers fluttered with abandon, to the point they generated a small breeze.

Once they were all reformed, Steven went around the room naming all of them. As far as he was concerned, Pearl had been Pearl for his entire life and he couldn't call any other pearl by her name. After naming a few more Disney pearls ( _Belle, Jasmine, three seed pearls he called Minnie, Daisy and Tinkerbell)_ he ran out of the movies he had actually seen and switched to naming them after flowers, fruit and other plants _(Azalea, Fern, Violet, Strawberry, Hazel)._ He asked them all if they minded their names, and he should have known none of them would object, but he felt he had to ask anyway.

Eventually, Alice returned with a metal instrument. It looked more like a lute than a ukulele, but they way it played was similar enough. Alice advised that they move to the basement of the building, it was soundproof.

"Is there any reason they're so quiet?" Steven asked Ginger as they went down the stairs, depending on her honesty to find a way around the problem.

"Only certain gems perform professionally," Ginger replied. "Pearls are only asked to sing by their owners, usually in private. Most never sing at all. And we are created to be quiet."

It said a lot about pearl culture that even when they broke the rules to sing to each other, it was barely an octave higher than a breath. But perhaps that was the solution; it was easier to break the rules when everyone around you was doing the same.

He asked them all to sit in a circle, and they obeyed (in unison, which was a bit creepy.)

He started them off easy; _Row, row, row your boat_. Only the barracks pearl _(Bunny),_ Alice, the blind pearl _(who he had named Blinky and couldn't stop thinking of her as that even though it sounded like a really mean joke)_ and the Disney pearls managed to sing much louder than a sigh, but he thought by the time the round included every pearl in the room they had relaxed enough to enjoy themselves. Their fingers never stopped moving.

He had them follow him in _On Top of Old Smoky_ next. He knew his own singing was off-key and scratchy compared to the purity of their tones, but he made up for it in volume. He thought some of them looked alarmed at the way he screeched about losing his stuff on the mountain, but when nothing bad happened the concern faded.

He could barely play the instrument Alice had given him, it was nothing like a ukulele after all, but they picked up the tune of whatever he was bellowing at them easily enough. They probably had no idea what any of the animals he sang about in _Old MacDonald_ were, but they followed his lead without question. Soon he had them yelling the refrain to _John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt_ loud enough to rival a small kindergarten class.

Eventually he ran out of bus journey singalong tunes and moved on to pop hits he sort of remembered from the radio. Sometimes he didn't remember all the words, but that hardly mattered. It wasn't like any of the pearls were judging him. One of the seed pearls _(Minnie)_ gave up on singing actual words and just threw out a lot of nonsense words to the approximate tune Steven was trying to teach them. After a while, they all stopped trying to copy his words and used nonsense words instead.

It took him some time to realize that the words weren't nonsense at all; it was a language of its own. He fell quiet, just strummed the instrument, as the pearls took up the music for themselves in their own words.

It was a strange language; all breathy softness and clear vowels, no consonants to speak of, and yet it could be roughly translated if you listened closely. It was the sound of their gestures, the brush of their fingers and the exhaled sigh drifting in the wind, the whisper of material grasped in the palm of the hand, the shuffle of a barely moved foot on a marble floor, the flutter of a slowly blinking eyelash. Set to music, it sounded transcendent, like a prayer.

With a start, he realized that this was the music he had heard in his dream, that faint echo in the abyss.

The voices in the chamber swelled, reached a crescendo where they burst against the ceiling, and then they fell silent again. Fifty two pairs of eyes turned towards Steven; they had plainly forgotten he was there at all, and now he thought he could see a note of fear in their collective postures.

"Wow," he mumbled, scratching his head. "That was...wow..."

He turned to Ginger, but she wasn't looking at him. She was ramrod straight in her seat, clutching her skirt hard enough to tear holes in it. Tears glittered in her eyes but she was holding them back.

"That was okay, wasn't it?" he whispered to her, suddenly nervous. "I mean...they're louder now. That was what we needed, wasn't it?"

She wiped at her eyes, and in a flicker she was coldly solemn once again.

"Yes," she agreed, and would say no more.

…..

"Well, you've more of a talent for tutoring than I ever did, quartz," Lapis said when Elsa finished her song. "Excellent work."

"It was nothing," Steven chuckled. "They did all the hard work, I just kind of shouted at them."

"Whatever works," Lapis muttered.

"I'm sorry I couldn't play the thing," he told her. "It looked like my ukulele but it didn't sound much like it."

"That's quite all right," she said, almost kindly. "I've never cared much for the dulcemeter, it's an awfully shrill instrument. I used to keep it for my students but the ones who proved good on the dulcemeter often turned out to be horrible on the symphonaria. I couldn't bear to let them touch it."

Steven's curiosity was piqued, this was the most words he had heard the Dowager Lapis say. She was obviously passionate about music, but while Alice was playing some soft up-and-down melody on the huge piano-thing in the middle of the room he had never seen Lapis even touch it.

"Is that thing the symphonaria?" he asked, pointing at the contraption. "It looks pretty hard to play."

"It's very challenging," Lapis admitted. "Even if you learn to play it, it takes an eternity to master it. But when you do, it makes the most beautiful music..."

Her face softened as she spoke, her smile bittersweet.

"I was once the very best, if you can believe that," she told him. "I played for the Diamonds. Gems waited orbits to see me play in the forae. No gem has played quite so well as I did..."

She trailed off, staring at Alice's slight frame as her fingers flew across the strings.

"...until I let _her_ play. What a waste...the only gem who ever hears her play is me."

"Why?" Steven asked.

Lapis snorted, inhaled a drag of her pipe and blew it over her shoulder. Bitterly amused, she smirked down at him.

"Perhaps a quartz of your stature doesn't quite understand," she explained. "No pearl will ever be permitted to play the symphonaria in public. No matter how good she is."

"Oh," he mumbled. He should have expected that. "Well, what's stopping you from playing? You obviously miss it."

"An accident damaged my gem many orbits ago," she told him. "I was given all the usual grafts, but my fingers don't work the way they used to. I don't know why I'm telling you this..."

"Ah...well, I might be able to help with that..."

Lapis scoffed and rolled her eyes, but Steven didn't bother explaining. He knew she'd thank him. He licked his palm and slapped it across her gem, ignoring her splutter of outrage.

"What do you think you're..."

She trailed off, dropping her pipe to stare at her hands. Her breathing was shallow, she trembled. Alice stopped playing to go to her owner's side and support her as she shakily got up from the sofa.

"This is..." Lapis mumbled. "What did you do?"

"I healed your gem. You should be able to play again, right?"

Lapis didn't walk so much as glide over to the symphonaria. Her fingers fluttered over the strings, the pipes and keys in a set of complicated but flawless scales. Steven heard her sob, saw her press her hands over her face and lower her head to the surface of the instrument. Awkward as always after making someone cry, he looked away...

...and the sudden tension in Alice's stance struck him like a punch to the gut. Outwardly she didn't look any different, but he could tell something was wrong. She was looking at her owner crying over the symphonaria as if she had just been condemned to death.

 _Oh no._

Had he been wrong to heal Lapis, like he had been wrong to heal Murder Pearl? He just wanted to make her feel better, but had he somehow made life worse for Alice?

"Orthoclase says we can return to the workshop," Ginger said, emerging from the basement. "We're to leave all the pearls here."

Before he left, the Dowager Lapis managed to give him a dignified but tearful thank you.

…..

In all the excitement, he'd quite forgotten that Orthoclase had gone to pick up Garnet and Amethyst. His relief at seeing them was immediately overtaken by horror at the first words out of Garnet's mouth.

"We are leaving," she hissed. " _NOW!"_


	12. Chapter 12

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Twelve**

Note: I haven't seen any of the newer episodes, although I've gotten a lot of messages asking me to watch the latest one. I'll get around to it at some point, hopefully this week. I finally have some downtime and when I haven't written anything in a while, I get a bit antsy.

…..

The whole time Steven argued with Garnet, Orthoclase was watching from her chair with a mildly amused half-grin. Amethyst was uncharacteristically subdued, she idled by the door, looking like she desperately wanted to leave.

"We can't leave," Steven growled for what felt like the hundredth time. "We're so close to finding her..."

"Every second we spend here puts us in danger," Garnet hissed back (again). "You've compromised us...I understand what you;re trying to do..."

"Then why can't you understand we have to stay? We worked so hard to put this together!"

"All right," Orthoclase finally interjected. "As much fun as it's been to see you hash this out all cycle, I can't let you waste any more of my time."

"Stay out of this," Garnet told her sternly. "It has nothing to do with you."

"Like slag it doesn't," Orthoclase laughed mockingly. "The pebble here put my entire operation at risk and cost me a few thousand credits' worth of jobs. Not to mention what he's done to my pearl..."

Alarmed, Steven glanced over at Ginger, but she didn't look any different than she normally did.

"If you drag him away now, it was all for nothing. And I have been assured that if there's any chance your missing pearl can be found, this is about the only way to do it safely. Right?"

She turned her head towards Ginger, who nodded.

"You've made it here, there's been nothing on the bulletins about a rogue Amethyst and a fusion wandering around Homeworld. Not yet anyway..." she continued. "Most bulletins are still concentrating on those Jaspers that got shattered, so this is about the safest time to go wandering around Homeworld. Why not stay and lend us an extra hand or two?"

"Maybe...if we..." Amethyst spoke up, hesitantly.

" _NO_ ," Garnet ground out. "Our decision is final. We are going."

That awful sick feeling rose in Steven's stomach. Even Amethyst looked distraught, and stern as she was Garnet was clearly upset.

 _All those pearls...we dragged them away for nothing..._

"Orthoclase brought you here," Ginger spoke up, rising to her feet. "She had me cover you with nanobytes to conceal your identities. If you wish to leave Homeworld, we cannot stop you, but we also cannot help you leave."

Orthoclase's half-grin grew into a full, exceptionally pleased one.

"You won't make it past the checkpoints without us," Ginger continued in that flat monotone. "Even if you unfuse, a Ruby outside working hours and a Sapphire outside the cloisters will be instantly clocked. The Amethyst has a slightly better chance, but she's not registered to a squad and is therefore illegally squatting."

Garnet's mouth opened and closed, without words. Fear filled Amethyst's face, but there was a hint of something else in her posture. Relief.

"She's right," Orthoclase sighed. "I can't say I'd be much obliged to help you, especially since you barged into my workshop and started ordering every gem around. Maybe it's in your best interests to let us keep going."

Defeated, Garnet struggled for words a few more times, before she gave up and stormed away towards the back of the workshop. Steven started to go after her, but Amethyst stopped him.

"Give her a few minutes," she said, sounding exhausted. "I'll talk to her in a bit."

"Okay," Steven sighed. "Sorry. I just...I wanted to..."

"I know," Amethyst cut in. "I understand what you were trying to do, just...did you really have to do it like _this?_ Did you even think about how worried we'd be?"

"I did, I really did," he assured her. "But it seemed like we weren't any closer to finding Pearl, and then the offcolour pearl said she knew someone who could help, so it seemed like a good idea. I didn't expect it to take this long, but..."

"Steven," Amethyst cut in again. "How long do you think you've been gone?"

"Hm? I dunno...a few weeks?"

"It's been three months."

He nearly choked on his own breath. _Three months?_

 _How is that even possible?_

"Time moves differently here," Amethyst explained. "Everyone in Beach City was pretty frantic. We tried to explain that you were probably offworld, but they had search parties and everything. Your Dad was on TV..."

"I'm sorry," Steven said, though it felt like he could never say it enough now. "I didn't mean to...I mean, I didn't want..."

"I know. It's fine," she cut across him once more. "We'll handle that when we get back. Don't worry about it. Now, tell me about this plan you've been working on."

…..

Towards the end of telling Amethyst all about the chorus, the pearls he'd met and all the other gems he'd come across in the last _three months,_ Ginger emerged from one of the back rooms of the workshop and placed a beaker of that murky stuff in front of him without a word. He knocked it back, while Amethyst watched with a single raised eyebrow.

"Ginger made it for me," he explained. "I didn't bring enough food..."

"She made it?"

"Yeah, she's really nice," Steven said. "She doesn't talk much...actually, none of the pearls talk much."

"Okay," Amethyst shrugged. "Why is she called Ginger? I thought gems just called their pearls Pearl."

"Oh, I started calling her that. 'Cos Pearl is Pearl, right? I thought it would get confusing. She doesn't mind. I had to name all the other ones too..."

"Just how many are there?" Amethyst asked. Her expression was hard to make sense of...disgust? Apprehension?

"Well, we needed fifty...so at first we just had Ginger, then we got the Disney pearls," he said, counting on his fingers. "And we picked up Bunny at the Jasper barracks, so that makes eight. Oh, and Alice at the Lapis' mansion, Blinky and Murder Pearl...I don't know if Murder Pearl's going to be in the chorus though..."

"Murder Pearl?" Amethyst questioned with a wince.

"Yeah, I didn't really name her," he admitted. "But it's okay, as long as Ginger's around she won't hurt anyone unless she's ordered to. Oh, and then we had to go steal a whole load of pearls from the processing plant, and we got...forty-two, I think?"

"Did you name all of those ones, too?"

"Yep! There's Fern and Belle and Wisteria and Blackberry and Minnie and Daisy...they're seed pearls, they're like _this tall..._ and Willow and...

"Steven," Amethyst interjected. "I was kidding. You really named them all?"

"Well, yeah," he shrugged bashfully.

"Okay. So then, this Orthoclase...she seems all right?"

"Yes! I mean, I would never have gotten this far without her."

"She's a criminal, you know that, right?" Amethyst continued. "I mean, I've never been on Homeworld but even I can tell she's mixed up in some really deep stuff. What made you trust her?"

"She had no reason to help me," Steven explained. "She did it because Ginger wanted to. And I mean, I know what she does is against the law but sometimes she does it for good reasons..."

"Fine," Amethyst sighed. "If you think she can be trusted, we'll do what she wants us to. I just hope you're right."

…..

Whatever was going through Garnet's mind, Steven didn't find out. She was probably too upset to talk to him right now, which was understandable but still stung a bit. Amethyst went with him and Ginger to Lapis' mansion to check in on the chorus pearls.

Even through the nanobytes, Steven saw Amethyst wince when Ginger's jaw was cracked at the checkpoint.

"What, do they think you're smuggling valuables down your throat?" she laughed when Ginger was released. "How much can you even fit down there?"

She trailed off awkwardly when Ginger didn't respond to her joking.

"Pearls won't open their mouths on command," Steven whispered to her. "That's why they have to use the forceps."

"That's messed up," Amethyst muttered.

It was barely scratching the surface of messed up, but Steven decided to leave it at that.

Alice answered the door for them, and Steven found himself scanning her for signs that she was upset. He'd been worrying ever since they left the cycle before that he had inadvertently ruined her life, but if he had he couldn't see it in her facial expression or her posture.

 _But that's no help at all. They're too good at hiding things._

A silvery melody rang through the air as they were brought into the main chamber. It sounded like a small orchestra playing flutes, violin and piano in unison but he knew now that it was the work of one instrument, and one gem.

Dowager Lapis sat at her beloved symphonaria, idly playing with one hand while instructing the seed pearl standing on her toes on the little stage.

"Don't think of yourself as a string," she scolded but gently. "You little ones are pipes. You are full of air, bring the air out. Try again!"

"That's Tinkerbell," Steven whispered to Amethyst, pointing at the seed pearl. "And that's the Lapis I was telling you about. I fixed her gem for her so she can play again."

Indeed, the Dowager Lapis had up until then reminded him of a woman in her late eighties, an aging patrician. Suddenly it seemed like the years had fallen off of her. Tinkerbell did as she was told, rapidly spinning on her toes while singing a vibrato scale.

"Much better, but your breath control still needs work," Lapis told her, then beckoned to Alice. "Show her how it's done, please."

Alice climbed into the toe stance and repeated the move, but where Tinkerbell's voice had wobbled in places Alice's came out perfectly smooth.

"Excellent," the Dowager enthused.

It was only then that she noticed she had company.

"Please take over," she instructed Alice, rising to her feet.

Alice seamlessly took up her place and her fingers flew effortlessly across the instrument. Steven breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he hadn't ruined Alice's life after all.

"Methinks they shall be ready very soon," Lapis told him, beckoning them to sit on her couches. "Two cycles from now, if not before."

"That's great," Steven gasped. "Have you been working with them?"

"Of course," she replied with an elegant shrug. "I have not played in so long, and it would be rather a waste not to include them in my playing while I have them...you know, I never thought having pearls sing together would make such enchanting music. I may have to invest in some new ones after."

"Or keep some of these ones," Steven suggested. "Wouldn't that be easier?"

Maybe it was a little too obvious that he was trying to ensure the processing plant pearls went to a good home, because Lapis' eyes narrowed at him.

"We shall see," she said. "In any case, you may tell Orthoclase that I have a location for her. There's an old forae seven quadrants from here, it's a pre-war structure. We used to have open-top concerts there before they fell out of fashion. It's quite remote. I'll have my pearl give yours the co-ordinates."

"Wow, that's amazing," he said as Alice projected an image of the forae onto the wall. It looked a bit like a picture of the coliseum he'd seen in a book once.

"Technically, it belongs to an old friend of mine, but she hasn't done anything with it. If I tell her I'm looking to relieve the old glory cycles she'll understand. We may need some security though, it's on disputed topsoil. Lots of criminal interest, if you get my meaning."

"Security we have," Steven agreed, thinking of Murder Pearl and the Jaspers that owed them a favour.

He brought Amethyst down to see the rest of the pearls as Dowager Lapis returned to instructing the seed pearls. As she stared out at them from the stairs, she looked unnerved, uncomfortable.

"Do they always do that?" she hissed to Steven.

"Do what?"

It only occurred to him a moment later that the pearls moved in perfect unison, to the point that even blinking at them was a mass activity. He'd gotten used to it, but he could understand why it spooked Amethyst out.

"I have messaged Orthoclase," Ginger said, joining them on the stairs. "She has told us to stay here. She will join us when she has picked up the equipment we need."

"What equipment?" Steven asked.

"A pylon and some amplifiers for the symphonaria," Ginger explained. "The song needs some structure to climb. It won't take long."

"Okay," Steven said. "Well, while we wait, I can introduce you to all the pearls!"

Amethyst put up some resistance right up until he was introducing her to the nearest pearl, who happened to be Blinky.

"Steven, I think she's asleep," Amethyst hissed, trying to pull away.

"No, she's not, she just doesn't have any eyes," Steven explained.

He completely missed the horrified look on Amethyst's face as Blinky bid her a polite greeting. She managed to hold it together as he brought her around the room, introducing her to every single pearl, but occasionally she had a mild freakout.

"They brought you _where?"_ she sputtered during her introduction to Bunny.

"I was never told the planet's name," Bunny said. "They all called it the flame pit. Everything was on fire."

"Why did they bring you?" Steven asked, as this was the first time he'd heard this story.

"They wanted something to listen to on the way. And on the way back."

Amethyst nearly retched when Daisy explained in graphic detail how seed pearls were created. She had a somewhat manic smile glued to her face when Buttercup enthused about how she was enjoying having her leg back. Steven thought he could detect an unshed tear when Poppy explained that Honeysuckle still couldn't speak even after being healed, but that she could manage a song.

He didn't realize that Murder Pearl was there until Amethyst pointed her out.

"Is that the last of them?" she asked wearily. "Please let that be the last of them?"

"Uh, yeah. That's Murder Pearl."

"Hello, Steven," Murder Pearl said sweetly, with a cordial wave.

"Hi!" he chuckled weakly, very aware that Amethyst was a prime target for Murder Pearl's...leanings. "I thought you were still in your gem?"

"It was decided that I should stay alert for unexpected raids," she explained. Her eyes were fever-bright when she turned them on Amethyst. "Is this a new friend?"

"No, actually this is one of my oldest friends," Steven explained. "She came from my home planet to find me...and Pearl. This is Amethyst."

"Murder Pearl, huh?" Amethyst laughed. "How did you get saddled with a name like that?"

She was clearly expecting it to be some sort of stupid joke.

"I am the undefeated champion of the underground fighting rings," Murder Pearl explained smoothly. "I have killed many gems."

Amethyst glanced at Steven, shuffling uncomfortably on his feet, and back at Murder Pearl, waiting for one of them to laugh at this hilarious joke.

"Huh," she said at last. "What kind of gems?"

"Gems like you," Murder Pearl said, and smiled her sweetest smile.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Thirteen**

Apologies for the long delay, I had two trips abroad and I'm also currently working on the sequel to my novel, which is taking up a lot of my attention. I'll try to update as regularly as I can but as with the rest of 2018, my schedule is very packed.

BTW this chapter will get a little technical with musical and dance expressions, but I will add a glossary to the end.

…..

"Okay, Steven, look...I get why _they_ have to stay here, but why do _we_ have to?" Amethyst whined.

He estimated that about a cycle had passed by the time she finally reached the end of her tether. It wasn't exactly fair, though. It wasn't like the pearls were doing anything terrible. Or anything at all, really, besides staring into space and gesture-speaking with each other and occasionally singing little scales quietly to themselves.

"We have to wait here for Orthoclase to come back, she's not going to take long," Steven assured her. "Come on, they're not doing anything weird..."

"That's _why_ they're weird, Steven," Amethyst hissed. "They don't do anything! I mean, jeez, Pearl would have been cleaning up or, like, making a pie or _something..._ it's really freakin' creepy."

"You get used to it," Steven shrugged. "The only dangerous one is Murder Pearl, and she's not going to hurt us. Right?"

Amethyst blanched; clearly hadn't realized that Murder Pearl was just behind them, placidly listening to their conversation.

"No," she replied softly. "Not right now."

"Oh, and Elsa, but I think you'd only have to worry if you're a Jasper, and neither of us are, so we're okay!" Steven said, finishing with a thumbs up.

Amethyst just groaned and stomped away to sit in the stairwell.

She had only been sulking there for a few minutes when Orthoclase arrived, kicked open the door and told them all to get up.

"We've got everything, we're heading out in the next half-quadrant. This is it!" she announced with a wide grin.

…..

Steven held all the pearls (minus Ginger) in a sack on his lap, but thanks to the nanobytes it was disguised as a barrel of graphite shavings and the Topaz at the checkpoints didn't even look twice. Lapis had gone ahead with Garnet after she unfused; it wasn't unusual for a gem of her standing to have a Ruby bodyguard and a Sapphire in attendance.

Steven knew Garnet was still unhappy about this plan, but when she unfused he realized that her unhappiness was down to conflict between Ruby and Sapphire. Sapphire couldn't see far enough ahead to calculate the risk and she didn't respond well to the unknown, whereas Ruby just wanted to find Pearl and get them all off of Homeworld before they inevitably got caught. The disagreement between the two of them hadn't made them unfuse right away, because both were firm that they wanted off the planet, one way or another.

Still, as they drove the van-type vehicle out of the main city, it was clear where they were going was far away enough to (hopefully) escape detection. The balustrades of the abandoned building they were going to loomed in the horizon. All around it, the landscape was bare.

When they pulled into the central courtyard, there were a handful of Jaspers milling around, lifting the symphonaria under Lapis' strict instructions and rigging up the pylon in the centre of the yard.

"It's rather more rundown than I expected," Lapis told them, brushing the hem of her gown with an air of irritation. "But it will have to do."

"I'm not picky," Orthoclase shrugged. "When did the Jaspers get here?"

"They were here when I arrived."

"Efficient. I like it!" Orthoclase said with a grin, and walked over to greet them.

Steven approached Ruby and Sapphire cautiously. The hem of Sapphire's gown was fringed with clinging icicles, and she was visibly gritting her teeth. Ruby was stepping from one foot to the other, clutching her hands, full of nervous energy.

"It's all going smoothly so far," he laughed quietly.

Sapphire's jaw clenched, the icicles shattered as she turned and walked away.

"We should leave her alone for now," Ruby said in a voice that quivered like a bowstring. "When she gets like this there's no talking to her. What's with these Jaspers? Are they supposed to be here?"

Smoke plumed from the soles of her feet.

"They were told they're allowed to keep some of the pearls after the Chorus," Steven told her. "So they owe us a favour..."

"A favour? This kind of thing goes beyond a favour, Steven," Ruby giggled in a frenzied manner. "Jaspers never break the rules! This is a sting, oh sweet core it's a sting...!"

"No, no, they just _really_ like pearls. They even let us borrow their pearl for a while," he assured her. "Look! That one likes pearls so much she's crying!"

It was the seed pearl fanatic. Steven figured she'd volunteer for the Chorus mission, but once she caught sight of not just Thumbelina but the other seed pearls she crumbled into a sobbing, howling mess.

" _There's...too...many..."_ Steven heard her gasping through her tears. " _I... can't... protect... them!"_

"That's okay," Daisy shrugged and patted her back, and the others nodded. It only made the Jasper howl louder.

" _Agh, you're so cute!"_ she shrieked skywards.

In the corner, Ginger was removing the pearls and (Steven assumed) calling them out. One by one they were regenerating and filling the courtyard. Steven found himself joining her, watching the pearls spring back to life was a very positive action when surrounded by so much nervous energy. Alice approached the symphonaria, but Lapis waved her away.

"You should sing with the others," Steven heard her say. "I will play."

"This is a pearl song," Alice responded, quietly but firmly. "It should be played by a pearl."

Lapis raised an eyebrow at this little defiance, but she stepped aside and ushered Alice to sit by the instrument. Then she sauntered off to watch the proceedings in the stands.

"Don't you need three strong singers to start the song?" Steven asked Ginger, recalling that little detail from the planning. "I mean, you have Blinky and Bunny but don't you need..."

"Willow can fill in. Her owner was fond of her singing," Ginger replied.

Steven glanced over at the pearl he'd named Willow. He named her that because she had six long ponytails sprouting from her head and was silver and pale green in colour. That was before he noticed that both her arms was missing from the elbow down. Her owner may have liked her singing but it wasn't enough to protect her from being 'improved'.

"It looks like we're ready to begin," Ginger told him. "You should go to the stands with the others."

Up on the stands, Amethyst, Sapphire, Ruby, Orthoclase, Lapis and the Jaspers had taken their seats. Their expressions ranged from apprehension to mild interest to excitement. The superfan Jasper audibly gasped when the seed pearls climbed up on the little platform that had been built to keep them on the same level as the others to take their positions.

"Don't start crying again," Steven heard one of the others hiss. "You're embarrassing us."

"I'll try," the superfan hissed back. "But I can't make any promises."

When all the pearls were in position, Ginger included towards the centre, the signal went out to Alice, and she began to play. An ascending high note, clear as a bell, climbed through the pipes and was joined by another, lower, in harmony.

Bunny's mouth opened, and she matched the high note as Willow took the low. A resonant note on the strings rang and was matched by Blinky, just as a rhythmic percussion thrummed through the ground. The notes were held, rose and burst, just as visible strings of gold started streaming from their outstretched hands towards the pylon.

The notes changed, an arpeggio, and their fingers danced along, weaving the gold threads deftly. Even Willow managed to weave with the stumps of her arms, catching her threads on her exposed toes effortlessly. The threads fluttered down the pylon, making it look like a maypole, and then they fanned out.

The Disney pearls, just behind the beginning trio, took up the strings and the song. Their notes soared as a web of threads were fixed to the central threads, and were spread out into the air. The trio stepped back and spun on their toes as the sextet made a forward glissade, then hopped back so that their threads wound around each other. Considering they weren't looking at each other, and one of the dancers was blind, they melded so perfectly it made Steven shiver, despite himself.

As the woven threads flexed and wavered, the structure spread outwards over the courtyard. Finally, the rest of the pearls joined in. The song formed words, though they were words that couldn't be understood by those watching, they spoke of searching, of longing. The tune was mournful and yet hopeful, full of minor keys and soaring resonance.

They danced together, circling and weaving in and out of each other as they wove the threads that built the web. They moved in impeccable symmetry, even the seed pearls on their platform kept pace with the others. Alice's fingers flew over the symphonaria, then suddenly she increased the volume with a heavy crescendo that the pearls matched. The web flew into the air, spun once and fluttered out beyond the courtyard, beyond the building, towards the sky. It was now large enough to be seen from anywhere on Homeworld.

It continued to spread, towards the city they had come from and, Steven assumed, over the rest of Homeworld. The pearls held the remaining strings as the song faded, lowered into a single held note. One by one their eyes closed, and their movements finished. They were concentrating.

Then, slowly, the song began to break. Each pearl let go of her string with a little exhaled breath, it dissolved in the air like smoke. Their eyes fluttered open and they looked to each other. Some of them began gesture-speaking, almost frantically.

Ginger broke away from them, marched towards the stands as the watchers were still trying to process what they had seen. Steven glanced over at Lapis, and was astonished to see tears flowing down her cheeks. From behind her, the superfan Jasper burst into loud sobbing again, but the other Jaspers seemed shell-shocked, too incredulous to stop her.

Even Sapphire seemed stunned. Her mouth was hanging open, as though she were trying and failing to find words. Ruby had an expression of rapture. Orthoclase was failing miserably at looking unimpressed, and Amethyst's face was...pleased? Confused? It was hard to tell.

In Steven's esteem, it had been one of the most beautiful things he had ever heard or seen. It made him want to cry, but it also made him want to laugh. It filled him with sadness and joy in equal measure, both emotions fighting for dominance.

Joy won in the end, because as soon as Ginger reached the stands she had news.

"We know where she is."

…..

They regrouped back at Lapis' mansion. The Jaspers were dismissed, and Steven had to say a reluctant goodbye to the Disney pearls and the seed pearls (they had decided they might as well give them to the superfan.)

"I hope they treat you well," Steven said as he hugged each of them in turn.

"They will," Bunny assured him. "They have always been very good to me."

 _Very good to me_ for Bunny meant being dragged to dangerous planets, singing non-stop for hours and being trussed up like a demented plastic doll, but it was probably as good as it was going to get for them. He'd fooled himself up until the very last moment that he could take the pearls with him when he left but he knew now it was impossible. The best he could hope for was for them to go to kind owners.

Lapis had been silent ever since they left the abandoned building, sitting by her symphonaria but making no effort to play it. Alice hovered nearby, watching her intently.

Orthoclase, meanwhile, was acting almost like it had never happened. She had three screens open, one of which was a news bulletin detailing some 'strange astral phenomenon' that had caused almost every pearl on Homeworld to glitch.

" _I dunno, we were just walking around the promenade like we usually do,"_ a pretty and somewhat vapid-looking purple gem was telling the interviewer. _"And then that thingy appeared in the sky and she just, like, freaked out! Started spinning around, and I didn't even tell her to do it! Then once it was gone, she was okay."_

"Did every pearl on Homeworld join in?" Steven asked, sitting down beside Ginger, who was typing on a fourth screen.

"All but the ones who couldn't," she replied.

"What do we do now? We know where she is, right?"

Ginger stopped typing, and before she spoke she observed the other gems in the room. They were all distracted, Amethyst and newly refused Garnet were having a quiet hissed conversation in the corner. Lapis was at her instrument. Orthoclase was flipping through her screens.

"We do know," she said, in a whisper. "A pearl who was nearby when she was brought in spread the word through the song. But she will not be easy to get to. We need to make a lot of preparations."

"Is she okay?" Steven asked.

"No," Ginger replied with her characteristic bluntness. Steven's heart skipped a beat.

"But...she's alive, right?"

"For now."

Glossary:

*Percussion: A beating instrument, such as a drum, or the sound of it

*Arpeggio: Series of notes in a rising or descending order

*Glissade: A small jump, starting on two feet and ending on one, a traveling movement

*Resonance: A vibration of sound waves in the air


	14. Chapter 14

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Fourteen**

Note: Once again, apologies for the lateness of this chapter. A headfirst dive into a new fandom that's given me a serious case of the waifu wails plus my usually packed schedule means it went on the backburner until I could give it the attention it deserved. We're nearing the end of this fic, but I may write other stories in the same continuity if anyone's interested.

…..

After what seemed like an eternity, Orthoclase stood up, cleared her throat, and everyone turned around to pay attention.

"I have all the arrangements made, more or less," she began. "I've done what I can...now I need to ask what you can do."

She wasn't addressing Steven or Amethyst or Garnet, but the pearls. Steven, who had been waiting on sweaty nervous tenterhooks since speaking to Ginger, clutched the couch cushions.

"I think you all know, more or less, what we're walking into here, but for those of you that don't I'll explain," Orthoclase continued. "There's a lab on the east district, one of the tower blocks. Old military research, supposed to be discontinued but someone's set up shop in there again. It's guarded by a Jasper squadron, and has a half-dozen Kunzites working in the lab. We need them taken out but not shattered. Murder Pearl's good, but she needs someone to run interference."

One of the pearls, a small one in shades of pale blue and yellow, raised her hand.

"You want me to impersonate a zoatox," she guessed.

"Spot on," Orthoclase nodded, and Steven realized that Ginger had probably passed the plan on to all the other pearls without him noticing. "We're disrupting the security holoforms so they won't see us. You make the noises and Murder Pearl will do the rest."

"What are we supposed to do?" Amethyst asked from the back of the room.

"Stay out of our way," Orthoclase shrugged. "The less gems we have on this, the better. I'll bring the pebble, we might need the special spit. And if any gems come sniffing around here after our little sing-song, we could use you here to look after Lapis and the pearls."

Amethyst didn't look happy about it, but she sighed and said nothing. Garnet, still clearly trying to keep her two squabbling parts together, had nothing to say. She leaned against the wall with her arms folded, gazing directly at the ground.

"Now, once we're in, that's when we can expect big trouble," Orthoclase said. "According to what I've found, the missing pearl is hooked up to some sort of organic parasitic...thing. It'll take time to remove, if it _can_ be removed..."

Steven's heart felt like it was going to drop into his stomach. From across the room, he watched Amethyst blanch and Garnet cover her face with her hands.

"...but if we stand any chance of getting it off and getting out of there undetected, we need to make it look like we weren't there at all. We need to leave a pearl there, and not just any pearl. It has to look identical to the missing one."

 _No. No, she wouldn't..._

"That means I need a volunteer..."

She had barely said the word before every available pearl's arm rose to the call. The few that didn't have a full arm to raise put up whatever limb they could. They didn't even hesitate.

"Okay, great," Orthoclase sighed. "Any of you will do, but we need a second string configuration circuit, otherwise any changes are just cosmetic."

The arms descended, and a silent gestured conversation took place among the pearls.

"I will take her place," one of them finally announced, walking forward.

Steven recognized her, she was one of the pearls in better condition than most of the rest. She was the pearl who had been working in the processing centre, the one who went with them willingly. He'd named her Waterlily.

"You're not second string..." Orthoclase began.

"I have the largest memory bank, they won't suspect anything for a long time," Waterlily told her. "You can implant a configuration core."

"Well, then I need another volunteer..."

"I'm second string, she can have mine," another pearl (Magnolia) piped up.

"Fantastic! Two quadrants in surgery and we're good to go."

…..

As much as he didn't want to, Steven watched the surgery. He felt it was his duty. Two pearls were choosing to sacrifice themselves for Pearl, and he owed it to them to not shy away from the messy details.

With a few incisions, the pearl that volunteered her configuration circuit flopped over like a puppet with her strings cut. Orthoclase carried her out to the others, and at the sight of her Amethyst looked like she was going to be sick.

Ginger stood by the operating table with a holo-projected image of Pearl they'd gotten from somewhere, and Orthoclase set about recreating the image on Waterlily.

"Couldn't you use nanobytes for this?" Steven asked, swallowing hard as he watched her scrape away Waterlily's skin.

"It wouldn't last once the organic matter was attached, we'd never get out in time," Orthoclase told him. "Plus we'd need Ginger to stay there, and I'm kind of fond of her so I'd rather not dump her in that place."

"It's not hurting her, Steven," Ginger assured him.

"I'm okay," Waterlily agreed, awkwardly now that most of the skin on her face had been peeled away.

Steven swallowed again, and tried to focus on something else.

"So, this organic thing you were talking about...what is it for? Like, what's it doing?"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them, but he hadn't been able to think of anything else to say.

"It's utilized to gather and process memory from pearls," Ginger told him with her usual bluntness. "Pearls are organic-based as well, it can access areas a normal probe couldn't reach. It's like a...vacuum, of sorts."

"I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't hack the notes," Orthoclase chimed in, casually pulling out a rib as she spoke. "Apparently they synthesized it using some leftover spores from a zoatox they had in deep freeze. Once we're done here, I'm leaking it across the bulletins, they put all of Homeworld at risk with this slag."

"Wait, so...it wasn't the Diamonds who took Pearl?"

"Nope, it's an illegal operation," Orthoclase said. "Probably disgraced military looking to get back in their good graces by finding out what the Renegade Pearl's been hiding. They tested it on fifteen pearls before they took her."

"That's why we need Waterlily," Ginger said. "She's gathered more memory than any other pearl."

"But...isn't memory, like, really important to you guys? I thought..." Steven stammered.

"It is an honour to sacrifice our memories for her," Waterlily said. "We all agreed."

…..

When the surgery was finished, the resemblance was uncanny.

Unless you knew Pearl very, very well.

Waterlily-as-Pearl was too blank-faced, too still and too calm to be Pearl. The effect was almost frightening, and Steven could tell by the look on Amethyst and Garnet's faces that they felt the same way.

"You're sure you don't need some extra back-up?" Amethyst asked, mostly it seemed as an excuse not to look at the copycat.

"No, we'll be fine," Steven assured her. "Orthoclase knows what she's doing, and Murder Pearl does too."

"I can't believe I'm sending you off with someone named 'Murder Pearl,' she groaned. "This has been one weird week...or month, whatever."

"Just look after Garnet until we get back, okay?"

"Sure," she shrugged. "And you try to bring Pearl back in one piece, okay?"

They shook on it.

…..

The facility was supposed to be on lockdown, but after Orthoclase used a small machine that made a loud noise to jam the security holoforms, Murder Pearl released her form and was dropped through a grate. A few moments later, the metal shutters on the door cranked upwards to let them in.

"We do this as fast as we can," Orthoclase whispered.

She turned and gave a signal to the blue-and-yellow pearl (Buttercup, wasn't it?) and with a nod she clambered up the wall to the air conditioning system. Out of her throat came a strange, eerie sound that froze Steven on the spot; a resonant, shrill scream that wavered in the pipes and seemed to move on its own towards the centre of the building.

Without a word, Murder Pearl crawled into the pipe after the sound. Distantly, they could hear panicked mumblings from other places in the building, which were cut short one by one. When the building was silent, she emerged from the pipe.

"She's in bay five, lab seventeen," she told them.

Steven caught glimpses of her handiwork as they made their way through the building; shattered panels and broken glass, twisted metal grating and gems in their gem form littered the floors. All in what seemed like ten minutes. Despite himself, Steven shuddered.

Of course, all thought of Murder Pearl and what she was capable of fled his mind when they finally reached the lab that Pearl was being held in.

She looked...okay.

He'd had visions of her being badly injured, maybe missing limbs like some of the other pearls, but her form was whole. She looked like she was peacefully sleeping on the gurney she'd been placed on, not even strapped down or restrained in any way.

It was frighteningly easy to miss the long black tendril suspended from the ceiling that was connected to her gem, thin as it was. It was waving gently back and forth, almost playfully it seemed. It didn't _look_ like it was hurting her...

"Sweet Core," he distantly heard Orthoclase say to the ceiling, as his own eyes remained rooted on Pearl's utterly still form.

Distracted by whatever the tendril was connected to, she didn't notice Steven hurrying to Pearl's side until it was too late, and he barely heard her hiss at him to come back.

"Pearl?" he croaked. His throat was oddly dry. "Pearl? Wake up! We came to get you..."

Once he was close enough to take her shoulder and gently shake it, he saw just how _not okay_ she was. The tendril was clearly burrowing into her gem, leaving a crumbling raw crater around it. Her eyelids were flickering rapidly and her breathing was harsh and ragged. Little dark raised veins stood out in her face, pulsing obscenely.

Gripped with an urge to pull the tendril out, he reached out to grab it.

"Steven, don't!"

The shout brought what was on the ceiling to furious life, enough to make Steven finally look up. An enormous black mass, like a breathing fungus, quivered and swelled. Long ropes of veiny black and red gelatin dropped from the ceiling, and with astonishing speed they targeted the other pearls in the room.

Ginger was pulled out of the way by Orthoclase in the nick of time, and Orthoclase covered her with her own body as the rope tried to get to her. Murder Pearl caught hers with her hook and was holding it inches from her face with grim determination. Waterlily cowered behind her.

Buttercup was neither quick enough to dodge or strong enough to hold the thing off, and it struck her right at the centre of her chest, where her gem was. She began to scream, a terrifying sound made all the worse by the fact that Steven had never heard any of the pearls scream before.

Swiftly, Murder Pearl managed to turn her hook to cut the tendril in half and she hurled herself at the one attacking Buttercup, slicing it off at the tip. The ragged end was left writing in Buttercup's gem, and Buttercup released her form in a puff of smoke.

Shock had stopped Steven from forming his shield, and he went for it just as another of the tentacles shot towards Waterlily.

 _I'm not going to make it,_ the thought flickered in his mind.

But Orthoclase managed to make it first. She had what looked like a syringe in her hand and she stabbed the nearest tendril with it. It shivered, withered a little and dropped limply to the ground. They all watched it intently, for signs of movement, and when nothing happened they all took a deep breath.

"That should keep it still for a while," Orthoclase sighed. "But just so you know, pebble, I could have done without that stress. Plan was to immobilize it before it sensed other pearls."

"I'm sorry," Steven mumbled. "I got...distracted."

Orthoclase's stern expression softened, and she strode to the gurney with purpose.

"Right, well, let's not waste any more time," she said, rooting through her equipment bag. "Let's see how deep this thing's gotten."

Using a scalpel and tongs, she poked and prodded at Pearl's gem in a way that made Steven feel vaguely sick. It was bad enough watching her do it to pearls he didn't know that well; seeing her work on _Pearl_ was a different level of uncomfortable. Even Ginger holding her hand on the other side of the gurney didn't ease the discomfort.

"Okay, I have good news and bad news," Orthoclase said at last.

Steven didn't trust himself to speak without bursting into tears.

"Good news is, I can get these out. It'll take a while but once the embedded strands are separated from the main host they're pretty much dead. I just have to cut them off."

Well, that was a relief. But...

"But, there's a _lot_ of core damage here. It's kind of incredible she's kept it together, but she's in stasis so I guess that's accounting for most of it. I hate to say it but the parasite might be what's holding her together. Once it's gone, I don't know what'll happen."

Steven sniffled. When had he started crying, exactly?

"We should at least get her out of here," Ginger suggested, speaking on Steven's behalf. "If she is going to shatter, it would be better if it happened away from this place."

"Got that right," Orthoclase muttered, and deftly she sliced through the tendril.

Gently, she lifted Pearl down from the gurney and laid her on the floor. Her eyelids were no longer flickering and her breathing was more relaxed, but those awful veins remained.

"You ready?" Orthoclase asked, and with a start Steven realized she was talking to Waterlily.

Waterlily showed no signs of fear or sadness, but Steven could sense it in her anyway. Who wouldn't be frightened, after seeing what this _thing_ could do...?

"Maybe she doesn't have to do this," he said when he found his voice. "We have Pearl now, and the thing's not moving, we could..."

"No," Orthoclase cut across him severely. "It has to look like the lab was attacked by zoatox. If the authority even suspects gem involvement we're finished, and they need to be the ones to shut this operation down. We need to leave an intact pearl here to prove it."

"But..." Steven spluttered. "I mean, we can't just..."

"Steven," Ginger said gently but firmly. "Waterlily has made her decision. You dishonour her by refusing her sacrifice."

Stunned, he looked at Waterlily. She smiled at him and nodded.

"I have lived a good life," she told him.

And so, he kept his silence as Orthoclase bore a hole in Waterlily's gem and pushed one of the tendrils into it. They left her there.

Pearl was tucked into a box of lead shavings that Orthoclase had brought along, and stored in Ginger's gem alongside Buttercup's gem. They made it safely to the door and were almost at their vehicle when Murder Pearl stopped.

"Something wrong?" Orthoclase asked, looking around for reformed security gems.

"I can't go with you," Murder Pearl answered. "I cannot let that monstrosity live."

"What?" Orthoclase scoffed. "Come on, we have a plan we need to stick to...!"

"I will wait here," Murder Pearl said. "I will allow enough time to pass so that you cannot be suspected, and then I will kill it."

"For the love of Core," Orthoclase swore, and turned to Ginger. "Can you talk to her?"

"No," Ginger said bluntly. "She is right."

"It is an abomination. I will also destroy the lab and the notes so that they can never create another one," Murder Pearl continued. "It will never touch another pearl."

With a long-suffering sigh, Orthoclase agreed.

"Your owner is going to be severely tetchy with me now," she grumbled.

"I don't think that's true," Murder Pearl said. "She was looking to get rid of me, actually."

"Thanks for everything," Steven said past the lump in his throat. "We wouldn't have gotten this far without you."

For the first and last time, he saw a genuine smile light up the notorious Murder Pearl's face.

"It has been an honour," she said, and then she was gone.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chorus**

 **Chapter Fifteen**

….

So we're finally at the end of Chorus (minus the epilogue, which will be forthcoming), thank you all for sticking with the story all the way to its sporadic, stumbling conclusion. Since Murder Pearl and the Orthoclase/Ginger pair have proven so popular, I was thinking my next longform multi-chapter would be a Homeworld-set detective story featuring the three of them prominently. Thoughts?

…..

The journey back to Lapis' mansion was deathly quiet. Orthoclase was unusually grim and tight-lipped, and though Ginger was as blank-faced as she always was, Steven could sense a tension in her. Of course, Steven himself was keeping his mouth shut because he was sure if he opened it, he would collapse into a gibbering mess.

There had been six of them on the outward journey. Of those six, one was incapacitated, one was dying a slow, painful death and one (the dangerous one) had taken off for reasons of her own. The one they picked up to take back with them was gravely injured. The only one who could possibly fix what was wrong with her was good, but didn't know if she was _that_ good. She wouldn't be able to tell until she got back to the mansion where her full stock of equipment was waiting.

Who wouldn't panic, under those circumstances? Distantly, Steven gave himself a little mental pat on the back for holding it together for as long as he had.

When they finally arrived back at the mansion, Orthoclase practically kicked the door in. Every gem gathered in the living room looked up, but she stormed past them without a word. She made her way to the table she was using to operate on and started prepping it, as Ginger rooted out her surgery tools.

"What happened?" Amethyst demanded, looking Steven up and down for signs of injury. "Did you get her? Where's the other two?"

"We got her," Steven told her. "But...it's pretty bad...Orthoclase is going to operate...that thing hurt Buttercup and Murder Pearl stayed behind to kill it..."

"What thing?" Amethyst asked. "What did it do?"

Steven opened his mouth to answer, but he couldn't find the words. Amethyst stared at him, waiting, increasingly strained-looking.

"Amethyst," Garnet called, strangely calm. "Leave him alone."

Ginger had pulled out the box of lead shavings they'd used to hide Pearl, and Garnet watched carefully but from a respectful distance as they pulled her out of the box and onto the table. Steven saw her fists clench but she clearly knew even as capable as she usually was, she was as good as useless in a situation like this.

"Holy shit," Amethyst spoke in one harsh exhale. "What did they...what are you..."

She sputtered for a moment and fell silent, watching Orthoclase peer into the crater left in Pearl's gem by the black tendrils. Ginger rubbed some sort of oil on a long thin skewer and handed it to Orthoclase, who slowly and carefully slid it inside the gem as far as it would go. Pearl's fingers briefly twitched, and then she was once again deathly still.

"What can you do?" Garnet asked, as Orthoclase pulled the skewer back out.

"Honestly?" Orthoclase answered with a bitter edge to her voice. "Under any other circumstances I'd be telling this pearl's owner to get her processed and get a new one."

Steven felt the bile rise in his throat, and one look at Amethyst told him she felt the same way.

"That's not an option," Garnet said tightly.

"Don't I know it?" Orthoclase laughed harshly. "All the contacts, money and other pearls that I tossed into this...project. You'd think I'd have more to show for it..."

She was full of bravado, even now, but her heart wasn't in it.

"In professional terms," she began to explain. "She needs those fragmented tendrils pulled out, they've penetrated the subdermal layer and are fused to the core composite, which means I'd have to excise the upper layer before I get them out, but she'd need a fully-functional gem to even _think_ about doing that...and she doesn't have one."

"Can't you get the ones in her gem out first?" Steven blurted out. "And you use filler, don't you? For pearls that don't work right..."

"Pebble, there's barely anything left of her gem," Orthoclase told him. "The tendrils are holding it together like scaffolding, if I take them out now the whole thing is dust. If I try putting filler in now, it'll just cement the tendrils in there and most of it will fall through the gaps. I don't have that much filler to spare, I don't think even a repair centre has that much filler to spare. I'm sorry."

"I can use my healing spit," Steven tried, though he knew if that was an option they would have done that first. "I can..."

"That would reactivate the tendrils. Not to mention what's left of her spike," Orthoclase told him, gently but firmly. "She'd shatter straight away."

 _It's not over. It can't be over. We got her back._

It felt like all the air was being sucked out of the room. If they'd gotten to her sooner, she might have been okay...but with everything they had to do to get to her in the first place they couldn't have gotten there sooner...

 _It's my fault. I waited too long. I should have gone for her sooner._

"Try using live filler."

Ginger spoke quietly, but it was like a gunshot breaking through the tension. A small shot of hope.

She was peering into the crumbling wreck of Pearl's gem, solemn as a grave. Who knew what she was thinking? Orthoclase scoffed incredulously, raised her arms to the ceiling in a gesture of frustrated helplessness.

"Live filler?" she laughed without humour. "From what donor?"

"Take your pick," Ginger shrugged. "You can start with me."

Amethyst covered her eyes, but not before Steven saw relieved tears escape from her eyes.

"For the love of Core," Orthoclase swore. "That's more filler than one pearl can give, and even if I _had_ done the procedure before, even if it _had_ been done outside of simulations..."

"It's experimental, not impossible," Ginger cut in. "If any gem can do it, you can."

"Well, as nice as it is to hear your confidence in my abilities..."

"Can't you try it? Even if it doesn't work, it's something, isn't it?" Steven cried.

Orthoclase turned to him, as if she couldn't believe they were ganging up on her like this.

"I _could_ , pebble," she said. "I _could_ do all sorts of things. Problem is, this procedure probably won't work, plus if I get it wrong it could kill the pearl that's donating the filler. How many more pearls are you willing to throw away for this one?"

Steven couldn't answer that.

Ginger, however, could.

"Any one of us would be happy to give our lives for her," Ginger said. "Ask them if you don't believe me."

For the first time, they all turned to look at the pearls gathered in the living room. None of them had attempted to get any closer, but they were keeping a close vigil on what was going on.

"Fine," Orthoclase growled, then turned to the gathered pearls. "Do any of you want to let me stick a pipe through your core circuitry to harvest living nacre from your manifest bodies directly? Bearing in mind if I stick the pipe wrong on the first try you're as good as shattered?"

She clearly wasn't expecting every hand (or other working limb) to be raised, but perhaps she should have. The pearls had already proven themselves willing to sacrifice their lives for the Renegade Pearl. Orthoclase sighed, rubbed her temples and groaned.

"Okay then," she grumbled. "We'll try it. I'm not making any promises, but we can try it."

The relief hit Steven so hard he nearly fainted. Shakily, he sat down on the ground beside the operating table. Pearl's hand was dangling slightly off of the side, and he reached out to thread his fingers through hers. They were cold, but if he concentrated hard he could almost feel a slight pulse of life in them.

Ginger handed a long tube and a sharp needle-like instrument to Orthoclase, and turned to pull her hair to the front.

"No," Orthoclase hissed, just loud enough for Steven to hear. "You're not going first."

…..

The first five times, Orthoclase got the placement wrong. It shattered the first pearl _(Blackberry)_ and stopped the next two _(Lemonade and Jane)_ from moving. They crumpled to the ground like puppets whose strings had been cut. Orthoclase managed to get some of the strange shimmering liquid she needed out of them, but it wasn't much. The pipe fed it directly into Pearl, the forceps held her jaw open to receive it.

The procedure was unpleasantly close to violence. All the Crystal Gems looked away when Pearl's jaw was cracked, uncomfortable as it was to watch it done to a regular pearl it was unbearable watching it happen to Pearl. The cannula Orthoclase used to pierce the donor pearl's core spine had to be thrust downwards at the exact spot with enough force to go through the several layers of the manifested form. It looked uncomfortably like Orthoclase was stabbing them.

After the fifth pearl _(Meg)_ only lost the feeling in the right side of her body, Orthoclase perfected the technique. The sixth pearl _(Rosemary)_ was hit in exactly the right spot, and the tube filled with nacre almost instantly.

"Holy Core," Orthoclase whispered, more to herself than anyone. "This might just work..."

Slowly, Pearl's gem began to reform itself. As soon as one pearl began to wilt, the cannula was pulled out and she was replaced by the next in line. Ginger was deep in concentration, pulling the tendrils out of Pearl's gem by micro-measurements, as soon as it was safe to move them a little. She had excised some of the skin on Pearl's face to inch away the black strands there. Orthoclase was fully occupied with her stabbing and monitoring the flow of nacre.

When almost twenty pearls had been drained, a curious thing began to happen. Pearl's gem started flickering, projecting a broken image up at the ceiling. Steven tried to make it out, but it was too blurry to be seen properly. Her hand was a little warmer now, but Steven thought that might just have been the heat from his own hand.

When the image did clear enough for him to see it, he didn't recognize it. It was a projection of a tall red gem in a strange puffy outfit, laughing and talking to someone. Pearl had shown him a lot of things from Homeworld over the years, but he had never seen this gem before.

"That's one of mine," the pearl who was slumped over next to him _(Dandelion)_ piped up.

"One of yours?" Steven asked.

"The monster took most of her memory," she explained. "We're giving her ours."

Simple words, but the weight behind them hit like a sledgehammer. Those little blue cubes she'd been stacking in his dream, trying to keep the monster out, telling him that he _couldn't be there..._

"She kept yours safe," Dandelion assured him. "She protected your memory as long as she could. It's still there."

Pearl's gem flickered on and off throughout the procedure, the images becoming clearer and clearer as more nacre was pumped into her. They were filled with little exchanges, smiles and songs and touching hands. Stern commands, whispered secrets, casual indifference. Steven saw, for the first time, what gesture-speak looked like to a pearl's eyes, fluid and clear and beautiful as prayer.

What he didn't see was any note of harshness, any of the myriad cruelties visited on pearls by the gems that subjugated them. It was all joy and kindness. They hadn't just gifted Pearl with their own lifeblood, but given her their best, most treasured memories.

Ginger was the last pearl to give her nacre, and Orthoclase did hesitate, just a little, before stabbing her with the cannula. She turned her back to the images projected by Pearl's gem for the first time; for all her talk of wanting to know what Ginger was thinking, she didn't want to invade her privacy so directly.

Perhaps she would have been surprised to know that Ginger's most treasured memories were of her. Or perhaps that was exactly why she turned her back.

…..

"It'll take about ten cycles, maybe more," Orthoclase said when she handed over the lead-lined box where Pearl's recovered gem was stored. "I don't know how long it'll take on your planet. It's anyone's guess."

A shuttle had been sent down for them from Lars' ship, once the procedure was finished Orthoclase advised them to get off of Homeworld as soon as possible. Murder Pearl would likely be making her move on the lab soon and once she did whatever she was planning, the skies would be strictly monitored. She and Ginger brought them to the drop-off point; Steven had barely enough time to say goodbye and thank each of the pearls and the other gems that had helped them.

Lapis had scoffed in her haughty manner when he thanked her, but bid him a fond farewell all the same. The pearls seemed taken aback that they were being thanked at all. The temptation to try and smuggle a few of them back to Earth was so overwhelming that Garnet insisted on holding his hand as they left to stop him.

 _At least Blinky, let's bring Blinky, so she doesn't have to go back to..._

"You'll look after them, won't you?" he asked Orthoclase, as the shuttle's doors opened for them.

"Of course," Orthoclase assured him. "Won't be nearly so easy without your healing spit, but no matter. If you ever change your mind about going into remodeling..."

"I won't," he cut in.

"Shame," she shrugged.

"They will miss you," Ginger told him. "Even the ones who didn't get to meet you."

"They won't say anything, will they?" Amethyst asked, sounding a little panicky.

"No," she answered. "We are good at keeping our secrets."

Orthoclase snorted with good humour, and all the while Steven tried not to cry. He hated Homeworld and the awful things he had seen there, but his love and gratitude for Orthoclase and Ginger were so forceful he couldn't stand the idea of not seeing them again.

"You can come to Earth with us," he said suddenly, ignoring the stares from Garnet and Amethyst. "The shuttle's big enough..."

"Our place is here, pebble," Orthoclase said, gently but firmly. "We have work to do."

He hugged them both before he was pulled away into the shuffle. It didn't feel like nearly enough to express how much he loved them; they had risked their lives multiple times for his sake, done their best to accommodate him despite never having seen a human, much less a child before. Their absence would leave a hole in him that could never be filled.

He watched them from the shuttle window as they rose into the clouds. Orthoclase's long lean figure looking up into the sky, Ginger's petite frame stuck beside her like a mismatched set of salt-and-pepper shakers.

Someday, he might come back and find them. They would be fine, middling along doing the most illegal of things right under Homeworld's authoritative noses and getting away with it. They had promised they would message him.

They would be fine.


End file.
